gin to exist without a cause. The first principles of the Peripetetics were nothing more than conclusions derived from experience. Thus having adopted the opinion, from the general appearance of things, that the earth was at rest, they were under the necessity of giving it a foundation, or of supposing that it did not gravitate. If they adopted the former supposition, the foundation which they gave it, would require another to support it; but if they adopted the latter, they deviated from experience, which taught them that all the substances of which the earth was composed, gravitated. To shun these difficulties they adopted the principle that bodies did not gravitate in their proper places, and supposed that the earth was in its proper place. Believing that the air had no weight, and finding that water would rise in a receiver, from which the air was exhausted, they adopted the first principle, that nature abhorred a vacuum. Another principle, from which I believe a demonstration of the existence of God has been attempted, is, that there can be no law without a law giver; from which it is inferred, that the laws of nature could not have existed, without the existence of a God, or a being of immense power, from whom they may be derived. I may be mistaken in believing, that there are any who suppose that the existence of God may be demonstrated from this principle, but if there are any such, a little reflection will convince them, that there can be no Jaw given, without implying the previous existence of

E

a law. It is manifest that there can be no law giver, without power to establish his laws, and there can be no power without law. If God has power to create worlds, it must be a law, that the existence of a world shall always follow his wish for its existence. If he has power to establish such laws as he pleases, and impose them on nature, it must be a law, that whatever he wishes must be law. We have likewise been told, that there must be a God, because the order and regularity in the universe, must otherwise be attributed to chance. I answer, that there may be laws of nature, which necessarily produce that order and regularity. We may believe that there is no God, and still suppose that there are laws of nature according to which the earth was brought into, and is maintained in existence, with which we are unacquainted. These laws may be such as necessarily to produce regularity and order. In Chrystalization we see bodies arrange themselves into regular forms, such as might seem to be the products of art, through the unknown laws by which they are governed. If the existence of God could not be demonstrated from some other principles, we should not suppose it impossible, that the regularity of the universe was produced by laws similar to those.

But it will be said, perhaps, that the regularity of the laws themselves, if we admit such a supposition, must be attributed to chance, for we know no reason why they should be such as to produce regularity

sooner than confusion.

To this I answer, that the dif

ficulty will not be less if we admit the existence of God, for we know not why he should prefer order to confusion, and if his nature is such as to lead him to choose the former, this fact must be the result of chance, as much as the fact, that the laws of nature are such as to produce it. If you ask how nature or its laws chanced to produce regularity, may I not ask how the will and power, or rather the nature of God, chanced to be such as to produce the same; for if the laws of nature might have been such, as to produce confusion, there might have been the same imperfection in the laws of God's mind. If there be a thousand forms of disorder, to one of order, which the earth, spring. ing into existence from the nature of things, might have assumed, there are as many of disorder, to one of order, in which God might have created it.

So much for the principles from which a demonstration of the existence of God has been attempted in vain. The only one, from which a full proof of his existence can be derived, is the one adopted by Mr. Paley, of which I shall have occasion to speak at some length, in the first part of this work.

SPIRITUAL MUSTARD POT:

PART FIRST.

A DEMONSTRATION OF THE EXISTENCE OF GOD.

CHAPTER I.

CONCERNING THE FIRST PRINCIPLE ON WHICH OUR DEMONSTRATION IS FOUNDed.

MR. PALEY begins his demonstration of the existence of God, in the following manner :

"In crossing a heath," says he, "suppose I pitched my foot against a stone, and were asked how the stone came to be there, I might possibly answer, that for any thing that I knew, it had lain there forever; nor would it, perhaps, be very easy to show the absurdity of this answer. But suppose I had found a watch upon the ground, I should hardly think of the answer which I had before given, that for any thing I knew the watch might have always been there. Yet why should not this answer serve for the watch as well as for the stone. For this reason and for no other, viz: that when we come to inspect the watch, we perceive, (what we could not discover in the stone,) that its several parts are framed and put together for a purpose, e. g. that they are so formed and adjusted as to produce motion, and that motion so regulated as to point out the hour of the day; that if the several parts had been differently shaped from what they are, of a dif