n uncontrouled dominion. If virtue tends to
happiness, or has only a better chance of doing so, it is allowed, that
a sensible atheist should hold it right to be virtuous. The latter end
of a righteous man is certainly more likely to be happy than that of an
unrighteous one. But let an atheist be righteous, and he can be as
certain of happiness in his latter end as any other. Let another life
be desirable, as it certainly is, his doubts upon it will not prevent
it. Who could wish an end better or more happy than that of Mr. Hume,
who most indubitably was an atheist. But if an atheist be not so good
as a Theist, Dr. Priestley perhaps, will allow him to be better than
a sceptic, as any principles for systematising nature are better than
none at all. A Theist is not without his doubts as well as the sceptic;
an atheist, once firmly becoming so, will never doubt more; for we may
venture to say no miracles or new appearances will present themselves
to him to draw his belief aside.

Still every thing is as God intended it--so asserts Dr. Priestley; and
therefore it cannot by him be denied that crimes and vices, are of his
intention. The Theist exclaims in triumph, "He that made the eye, must
he not see?" But who made the eye? Or grant that God made the eye,
which can only see in the light, must he necessarily see in the dark?
It is again asserted, "the power which formed an eye had something in
view as certainly as he that constructed a telescope. If any Being
formed any eye, grant it. But if the eye exists necessarily as a part
of nature; as much as any other matter, or combination of matter,
necessarily existed, the result of the argument is intirely different.

It is far from being a necessary part of the atheist's creed to exclude
design from the universe. He places that design in the energy of
nature, which Dr. Priestley gives to some other extraneous Being. It is
rather inconsistent also in him to say, that an atheist rightly judging
of his own situation upon his own principles, ought not to hold himself
quite secure from a future state of responsibility and existences, and
yet to say he must in his own ideas hold himself soon to be excluded
for ever from life.

As to the immutability of the Deity, it is difficult to guess how that
is proved, except by the argument of _Lucus a non lucendo_, because
every thing is changing here; therefore the Deity never changes; which
is neither an argument _a priori_ nor _posteriore_