Whence, do you think, can such philosophers
derive their idea of the gods? From their own conceit and
imagination surely. For if they derive it from the present
phenomena, it would never point to anything further, but must be
exactly adjusted to them. That the divinity may _possibly_ be
endowed with attributes which we have never seen exerted; may be
governed by principles of action which we cannot discover to be
satisfied; all this will freely be allowed. But still this is mere
_possibility_ and hypothesis. We never can have reason to _infer_
any attributes or any principles of action in him, but so far as we
know them to have been exerted and satisfied.

"_Are there any marks of a distributive justice in the world?_ If
you answer in the affirmative, I conclude that, since justice here
exerts itself, it is satisfied. If you reply in the negative, I
conclude that you have then no reason to ascribe justice, in our
sense of it, to the gods. If you hold a medium between affirmation
and negation, by saying that the justice of the gods at present
exerts itself in part, but not in its full extent, I answer that
you have no reason to give it any particular extent, but only so
far as you see it, _at present_, exert itself."--(IV. pp. 164-6.)

Thus, the Freethinkers said, the attributes of the Deity being what they
are, the scheme of orthodoxy is inconsistent with them; whereupon Butler
gave the crushing reply: Agreeing with you as to the attributes of the
Deity, nature, by its existence, proves that the things to which you
object are quite consistent with them. To whom enters Hume's Epicurean
with the remark: Then, as nature is our only measure of the attributes
of the Deity in their practical manifestation, what warranty is there
for supposing that such measure is anywhere transcended? That the "other
side" of nature, if there be one, is governed on different principles
from this side?

Truly on this topic silence is golden; while speech reaches not even
the dignity of sounding brass or tinkling cymbal, and is but the weary
clatter of an endless logomachy. One can but suspect that Hume also had
reached this conviction; and that his shadowy and inconsistent theism
was the expression of his desire to rest in a state of mind, which
distinctly excluded negation, while it included as little as possible of
affirmation, respecting a prob