for
what we know to the contrary our reproduction may be as much the
course of nature as our original production.."

29. "A gloom and melancholy belong more to atheists than to devout
people."

OBSERVATIONS.

Dr. Priestley will hardly doubt, after this collection from his work
that it has at least been read before it is attempted to be answered.
It is in the writer's power to quote the page and line for each
assertion, but it would be stuffing this publication with unnecessary
references. Dr. Priestley will be able to know what are his own
sentiments and what not without recurring to his printed Letters.
There has been also another difficulty in classing the several exceptions
under the different heads; what is false, what is absurd, and what is
inadmissible bordering so nearly on each other. Nice distinctions
cannot in such respect be made, but the whole together form the main
argument which is to be answered.

The first and principal assertion is, that effects have their adequate
cause; it is then added, that the universe is an effect, that it
therefore must have a cause, and to this cause in the English language
is given the name of God. This proposition is true, provided the
universe is an effect, but that is a _postulatum_ without concession
and without a proof. This _original Being_ he advances in another place
to be that only something which existed uncaused from all eternity, and
which could not have been a Being, like a man or a table, incapable of
comprehending, itself, for such existences would require another
superior Being. But if the universe is not adopted as an effect, if
it is taken as existing from all eternity, the universe becomes an
intelligent Being, and there or no where is the Deity sought after.
Such a Being we may properly speak of and reason upon. The whole is
subjected to our sensations and our experience. But of his own
_uncaused Being_ Dr. P. says we cannot properly speak. Is not that
alone an argument of there being no such thing? His friend Dr. Clarke
says, we cannot have an idea of an impossible thing. Now this
discovered Deity is allowed to be that of which we can have no idea.
So far at least it is allied to the impossible.

As to the argument of cause and effect, the latter certainly implies
the former; but when we give the name of effect to any thing, we must
be certain it is an effect, for we may be so far mistaken perhaps as to
call that an effect