which is created. An object, that exists absolutely
without any cause, certainly is not its own cause; and when you assert,
that the one follows from the other, you suppose the very point in
questions and take it for granted, that it is utterly impossible any
thing can ever begin to exist without a cause, but that, upon the
exclusion of one productive principle, we must still have recourse to
another.

It is exactly the same case with the third argument [Mr. Locke.], which
has been employed to demonstrate the necessity of a cause. Whatever is
produced without any cause, is produced by nothing; or in other words,
has nothing for its cause. But nothing can never be a cause, no more
than it can be something, or equal to two right angles. By the same
intuition, that we perceive nothing not to be equal to two right angles,
or not to be something, we perceive, that it can never be a cause; and
consequently must perceive, that every object has a real cause of its
existence.

I believe it will not be necessary to employ many words in shewing the
weakness of this argument, after what I have said of the foregoing. They
are all of them founded on the same fallacy, and are derived from the
same turn of thought. It is sufficient only to observe, that when
we exclude all causes we really do exclude them, and neither suppose
nothing nor the object itself to be the causes of the existence;
and consequently can draw no argument from the absurdity of these
suppositions to prove the absurdity of that exclusion. If every thing
must have a cause, it follows, that upon the exclusion of other causes
we must accept of the object itself or of nothing as causes. But it is
the very point in question, whether every thing must have a cause or
not; and therefore, according to all just reasoning, it ought never to
be taken for granted.

They are still more frivolous, who say, that every effect must have a
cause, because it is implyed in the very idea of effect. Every effect
necessarily pre-supposes a cause; effect being a relative term, of which
cause is the correlative. But this does not prove, that every being must
be preceded by a cause; no more than it follows, because every husband
must have a wife, that therefore every man must be marryed. The true
state of the question is, whether every object, which begins to exist,
must owe its existence to a cause: and this I assert neither to be
intuitively nor demonstratively certain, and hope to have