Priestley at least for one, contend at the same time for
the probability of a future life, when no instance can be given of any
revival whatsoever. The same will contend, that their Deity can at
pleasure form new species of animals, though in fact we never do see
new beings come into existence. We ought only to argue from experience;
and experience would teach us, that the species of all animals has
eternally existed. Grant that we do not know, whether man has been
eternal, or from a time, is it therefore because we do not know, that
we must say he came from God? That unknown Being, as he is sometimes
pompously and ridiculously called! The Devil is equally an unknown
Being. The admission of evil under a good Deity opens a ready door to
the manichean system, which seems much more rational than simple Deism.

The following chain of reasoning, as used by Dr. Priestley, is well
linked together to prove the weight and force of experience in
reasoning, but it proves nothing more. "Chairs and tables are made by
men or beings of similar powers, because we see them made by men; and
we cannot suppose them made by a tree or come into being of themselves,
because that is against experience. No one will say one table might
make another, or that one man might make another. We see nothing come
into being without an adequate cause." Yet for this adequate cause we
are at the same time referred to a belief in a causeless secret
invisible agent, and to our own experience, for a proof of his nature.

Dr. Priestley allows, that what is _visible_ in man may be the feat of
all his powers, for it is (as he says,) a rule in philosophy not to
multiply causes without necessity. But he affirms that what is _visible_
in the universe cannot be the feat of intelligence. This is breaking
the very rule of reasoning which he himself has chosen to adopt; and he
gives no other reason for it, than because we do not see the universe
think as we do man. Sensible of this dilemma, soon afterwards he
inclines to allow principle of thought to the universe, for he adds,
that if we allow it, yet the universe has so much the appearance of
other works of design that we must look out for its author as much as
that of a man; and it is allowed that most probably it had the same
author.

Every difficulty vanishes with the energy of nature, or at least is
as well accounted for as from an independent Deity. It is an usual
question to those philosophers, who maintain th