espect, nor more gloomy
descriptions of our condition, than in their celebrated work. "Whence
so many, inaccuracies," says the Archbishop, "in the work of a most good
and powerful God? Whence that perpetual war between the very elements,
between animals, between men? Whence errors, miseries and vices, the
constant companions of human life from its infancy? Whence good to evil
men, evil to the good? If we behold anything irregular in the work
of men, if any machine serves not the end it was made for, if we find
something in it repugnant to itself or others, we attribute that to
the ignorance, impatience or malice of the workman. But since these
qualities have no place in God, how come they to have place in anything?
Or why does God suffer his works to be deformed by them?"--Chap. ii. s.
3. Bishop Law, in his admirable preface, still more cogently puts the
case: "When I inquire how I got into the world, and came to be what
I am, I am told that an absolutely perfect being produced me out of
nothing, and placed me here on purpose to communicate some part of his
happiness to me, and to make me in some manner like himself. This end is
not obtained--the direct contrary appears--I find myself surrounded with
nothing but perplexity, want and misery--by whose fault I know not--how
to better myself I cannot tell. What notions of good and goodness can
this afford me? What ideas of religion? What hopes of a future state?
For if God's aim in producing me be entirely unknown, if it be either
his glory (as some will have it), which my present state is far from
advancing, nor mine own good, which the same is equally inconsistent
with, how know I what I have to do here, or indeed in what manner I must
endeavor to please him? Or why should I endeavor it at all? For if I
must be miserable in this world, what security have I that I shall not
be so in another too (if there be one), since if it were the will of
my Almighty Creator, I might (for aught I see) have been happy in
both."--Pref. viii. The question thus is stated. The difficulty is
raised in its full and formidable magnitude by both these learned and
able men; that they have signally failed to lay it by the argument _a
priori_ is plain. Indeed, it seems wholly impossible ever to answer by
an argument _a priori_ any objection whatever which arises altogether
out of the facts made known to us by experience alone, and which are
therefore in the nature of contingent truths, resting upon c