the same ease have created them. Indeed this great man appears, in the later parts of his life, not to have placed any serious reliance on this objection.

2dly. It is objected, that the state of the world is such, as to forbid the belief, that it is the work of a God.

"The world," says the objectors, "is full of imperfection, and of suffering. The course of nature is such, as to entail upon all its animated inhabitants, pain, disease, and death. Nor is the moral state of things materially different from the natural. Depravity, in all its odious forms, appears to have existed from the beginning; and has ever constituted, to say the least, no small part of the character of mankind." God, on the part of all enlightened men, who believe in the existence of such a being, and particularly on that of Christians, is declared to be possessed of infinite perfection. Can a being of such perfection be supposed to be the author of so imperfect, incongruous, and deformed a work? Is it not plain, that God either did not make the world, or that he has forgotten it, and left it wholly to the control of chance?

To this objection, which is attended with a degree of speciousness, and fitted to awaken fretfulness, where it will not produce conviction, I answer, in the

1st. place, that all the real weight of it lies in the existence of moral evil; a subject, which I shall have occasion to examine, when I come to discourse on the benevolence of God, and on the apostacy of

man.

2dly. The whole force of this objection lies in the inexplicableness of certain things which it alleges; and amounts to no more than this, that there are several things in the world, the nature, use, and end, of which we cannot understand. The argument contained in it, if resolved into a general principle, will stand thus. Nothing, the nature, use, and end, of which we cannot understand, can be the work of God. This argument needs only to be proposed, to be exploded; for it is absolutely certain, that God can do very few things, whose nature, use, or end, can be comprehended by us. It is equally certain, that, according to this rule of concluding, the same thing may, at the same time, be proved to be, and not to be, the work of God. One man may distinctly comprehend the nature of a thing, and discern in it certain proofs of divine workmanship. Another man may, at the same time, be wholly ignorant of the nature of the same thing; and his ignorance will, according to this rule, be decisive proof, that it is not a divine work. The same man, also, may, according to this rule, in the different periods of childhood and manhood, be able to prove a thing to be, and not to be, wrought by the hand of God. The evidence of the divine agency, and the Want of it, are here placed, not in the nature of the work, but in the nature of the optics by which it is perceived: an absurdity too palpable to need any further discussion. The real proof in this, other case, must, if it be found at all, be found in some

and

every

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thing which we know, and not in our ignorance. But it has not been, and cannot be shown, that in the existing world there is any thing inconsistent with the doctrine, that it was created, and is governed by God. It is readily acknowledged, that in the system of which we are a little part, mystery and inexplicableness are found every where, and in every thing, in the view of such minds as ours. At the same time, it is also certain, that nothing else can be rationally looked for in the works of Him, whose ways are higher than our ways as the Heavens are higher than the earth. The mysteries alleged, instead of being an objection against the doctrine, that the world was made by God, are a strong presumptive argument in its favour.

3dly. The direct proof of the divine agency in the formation and government of this very world, found in innumerable things which itself contains, is hitherto unanswered, and is plainly unanswerable. This, having its foundation in what we know, can never be affected in any manner by what we do not know; or, in other words, by the mere inexplicableness of the objects around us.

Universally, until we know thoroughly the nature, use, and end of the things, on which the objection is founded, it must be a mere and miserable presumption, that they have not such a nature, use, and end, as are worthy of God.

The Doctrines which Atheists have connected with these objections, and which are deserving of any serious attention, are the following:

I. That things have existed in an eternal series:

II. That their existence is Casual: and

III. That all distinct, or separate beings, owe their existence to the Powers and Operations of matter.

These I shall consider in the order specified.

I. It is asserted by Atheists, that there has been an Eternal Series of things.

The absurdity of this assertion may be shown in many ways. 1st. Each individual in a series is an unit. But every collection of units, however great, is with intuitive certainty, numerable; and therefore cannot be infinite.

2dly. Every individual in the series, (take for example, a series of men) had a beginning. But a collection of beings, each of which had a beginning, must, however long the series, have also had a beginning. This likewise, is intuitively evident. Should it be said, that the first in each series had not a beginning, but was from everlasting; which is the only possible method of evading the answer already given; I reply, that, according to this supposition, the first in each series was uncaused and self-existent; and, containing in itself the principles of eternal existence, could never have ceased to be. At the same time, an endless multitude of finite self-existent beings must be admitted on this supposition, possessed in all instances of few and feeble active powers, and in most instances of none but

such as are merely passive. Thus, for example, there must have been an eternal Man, an eternal Lion, an eternal Eagle, an eternal Oak, an eternal Rose, eternal Grass; and in a word, as many eternal self-existent Beings, as there are kinds, and sorts of existences in the world: for no being of one kind can possibly produce, or bring into existence, a being of any other kind. Of course, there must have been one, eternal and self-existent, at the head of every existing series; and at the head of every series of animated beings, an eternal self-existent pair. From these, also, the whole series must have sprung without any contrivance, and in most instances, without any consciousness. All this, with a train of absurdities following it, literally endless, must be admitted on this supposition. For what purpose must all this be admitted? Truly, to relieve us from the difficulty of admitting the existence of One self-existent being. At the same time, the existence of such a finite self-existent being is a mere hypothesis, without a shadow of support.

Beyond this, all such beings must have lived, as we do, through a succession of years, and their whole existence must be made up of parts, or divisions, succeeding each other. These parts are à collection of units; and are therefore numerable.

Should it be said, that saints and angels in heaven are immortal, and will therefore exist through an infinite duration; that this duration will also be made up of successive parts; and that, of course, there may be an infinite duration made of successive parts: I answer, that there is a total difference between these cases. In the former, the supposed infinite duration is completed: in the lat ter, it will never be completed. It is true, that saints and angels will never cease to be: but it will never be true, that they have lived infinitely, or through an infinite duration. An endless addition of parts may be supposed; but an infinite sum of parts, which have actually had existence, is a self-contradiction.

3dly. It is justly observed by the learned and acute Dr. Bentley, that, in the supposed infinite series, as the number of individual men is alleged to be infinite; the number of their eyes must be twice, the number of their fingers ten times, and the number of the hairs on their heads many thousand times, as great as the number of men. What, then, must be the number of the hairs on the bodies of animals; of leaves on the trees; and of blades of grass on the earth? According to this supposition, then, there is an almost endless multitude of numbers, greater, and many of them incalculably, than an infinite number. To such palpable absurdities are we reduced by supposing an infinite succession.

4thly. It is also observed by the same excellent Writer, that all these generations of men were once present. One of the individuals, viz. the first, existed at an infinite distance from us. His son, who may be supposed to have been forty years younger, was either at an infinite, or at a finite distance from us. If at an infinite, then

the infinite distance of his father was forty years longer than the infinite distance of the son. If the son was at a finite distance from us, then forty years, added to a finite distance, will make it infinite.

It is unnecessary, that I should dwell any longer on this complication of folly.

The same arguments are, with the same force, applicable to all possible successions. Every succession is in its nature made up of parts, each of which has a beginning. Of course we see intuitively, that the whole has had a beginning.

The only subject, on which rests even a seeming obscurity in this respect, is what is called continued motion. Some persons have considered motion of this kind; such, for example, as that of the planets, as not being successive; because, when viewed in the gross, the successive parts were not separable by the human mind. Divide the circuit, as a wheel is divided by its cogs, or teeth; or fix upon a number of stars, by which the planet shall successively pass; and the delusion, occasioned by the continuity of the parts, will vanish in a moment. It will be seen of course, and with perfect distinctness, that motion, in all its forms, is as truly a succession of changes as successive thought, or successive being.

II. Atheists assert, that the existence of things is Casual.

In this assertion the connexion between cause and effect, and the very existence of causation, are denied, so far as the production of being is concerned. All beings are supposed not to have been produced, or caused, but to have happened: their existence being supposed to be a mere contingency. Some, perhaps most of those, who have adopted this system, have, however, at the same time believed matter to be eternal. On this scheme of existence I observe in the

1st. place, that it is a mere hypothesis, unsupported by any evidence whatever. The doctrine of casual, or contingent existence, precludes all reasoning by its very nature. The very demand of a reason from him, who adopts it, is itself an absurdity; because he declares to you in the very nature of the doctrine, that neither the existence, nor the doctrine, admits of the application of any reason. Of course, the fact, that existence has happened in any case, is in its own nature capable of being evidenced only by testimony, and of this evidence it is in fact incapable, because no witness was ever present at such a contingency. The doctrine, therefore, stands on exactly the same ground with that of all other mere assumptions; such as, that the soul of man is blue, or triangular; that the inhabitants of Jupiter walk with their heads downward; or that the Sun is a body of melted glass.

2dly. The abettors of this doctrine have, in their endeavours to form a system, founded on it, been driven, unavoidably, into a continued succession of absurdities.

Epicurus, the principal vender of this system, supposed, that in

numerable solid atoms existed from eternity in infinite space; that they were of different sizes and figures, and were all separated from cach other; and that they were originally quiescent, or motionless. When it was objected, that they must, then, have remained for ever motionless; he invented for them a conatus ad motum; an endeavour, or tendency towards motion; which he declares to have been inherent in them eternally. When it was objected, that, unless they were moved eternally by this conatus, they could never have moved at all; he avoided this difficulty by determining, that they had moved from eternity, in parallel directions. It was objected again, that with this motion they would never have approached any nearer to each other. To escape this difficulty, he gave them a motion, in a small degree oblique. The cause of their motion he declares to be their weight; and their direction to be downward: not knowing, that there is no weight, where there is no attracting body; and that every direction towards the centre of the earth is downward. I will not pursue this mass of absurdities any farther; and will only observe, that those, who have followed him, have not rendered the system a whit better than they found it.

3dly. The actual state of things is a complete refutation of this doctrine.

Regularity is a direct and perfect proof of the absence of casualty in the formation of that, in which the regularity exists; and the whole system of things is, in its parts, and their union in a whole, one immense and multiform system of regularity.

The twenty-four letters of the alphabet, small as the number is, are proved arithmetically to be capable of more than six hundred thousand millions of billions, of different horizontal arrangements. Were they to be thrown up into the air, and to fall in any supposed order, the chances against their falling, a second time, in the same order, are at least as great a number, as that which has been specified; and just so many chances exist against their falling in any given position.

In the human frame there are probably more than a million of parts, greater and smaller; all of which we behold united in a perfect and most regular system. The relative horizontal positions only, of which these are capable, must be expressed by more than a million of arithmetical figures; their vertical and oblique posi tions must be expressed by several millions more; and all these combined, must be expressed by the multiplication of these immense sums with each other. The chances, therefore, against such an union of the parts of the human body, as actually exists, even after we suppose the several parts actually formed, would be such, as would be expressed by this aggregate of figures: a number, which all the human race, who have existed since the Mosaic date of the creation, would not have been able to count, had they busied themselves in no other employment, during their lives. In addition to this, the number of chances against the original formation