ow unquestionable? It is questioned by the author
himself, and he declares he cannot prove it. After this he asks, who
will pretend to dictate to such a Being? He might in the same stile
conclude that no objection deserved a reply. The whole of this is
absurd; but when the Doctor begins to feel enthusiasm he is like the
rest of the ecclesiastical arguers. They reason themselves into
imaginary Beings with more imaginary properties and then fall down and
worship them. God is said to have made man in the image of himself. If
he has done so, man is up with him, for he in return makes God in his
own image. Much as the imagination of one man differs from another, so
differs the God of each devotee. They are all idolaters or
anthropomorphites to a man; there is none but an atheist that is not
the one or the other.

The admission of evil into the world is an argument so exceedingly
conclusive against at least a good Deity, that it is curious to see how
Dr. Priestley studies to get rid of that difficulty. He partly denies
the fact, at least he says there is more good than evil in the world.
At last he even turns evil into good, or what ought to be the effects
of one, into what ought to be the effects of the other, as he says pain
is necessary for happiness. But if pain is, as he says, in this world
necessary for happiness, why will it not still be necessary hereafter?
He answers, because by that time we shall have experienced pain enough
for a future supply of happiness. If it is objected, why have we not
had pain enough by the time each of us are twenty or thirty years of
age, instead of waiting 'till our deaths at so many different ages? He
can only finish his argument by allowing that the ways of God are
inscrutable to man, that every thing is for the best and refer us to
_Candide_ for the rest of his philosophy; nor will he ever resolve the
question, "if evil and pain are good and necessary now, why will they
not always be so? Take a view of human existence, and who can even
allow, that there is more happiness than misery in the world? Dr.
Priestley thinks to give the turn of the scale to happiness, by making
it depend intirely upon health, notwithstanding he says in another
place that human sensations are a mass collected from the past, present
and future, and as a man grows up the present goes on to bear a less
proportion to the other two. It would indeed be a short but lame way of
proving that "happiness is the design of