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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 14120 ***
+
+Attributed to Matthew Turner (d. 1788?) and William Hammon.
+
+Transcribed by the Freethought Archives
+
+NOTE: Irregularities in orthography and punctuation have been
+reproduced without emendation from the first edition of 1782.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+ANSWER TO DR. PRIESTLEY'S LETTERS TO A PHILOSOPHICAL UNBELIEVER.
+
+PART I.
+
+
+
+LONDON.
+MDCCLXXXII
+
+
+
+
+
+ADVERTISEMENT.
+
+
+The Editor of this publication has more in object to answer Dr. Priestley
+than to deliver his own sentiments upon Natural Religion, which however
+he has no inclination to disguise: but he does not mean to be answerable
+for them farther, than as by reason and nature he is at present
+instructed. The question here handled is not so much, whether a
+Deity and his attributed excellences exist, as whether there is any
+Natural or Moral proof of his existence and of those attributes.
+Revealed knowledge is not descanted upon; therefore Christians at least
+need take no offence. Doubts upon Natural Religion have not hitherto
+been looked upon as attacks upon Revelation, but rather as corroborations
+of it. What the Editor believes as a Christian (if he is one is
+therefore another affair, nor does he reckon himself so infallible or
+incapable of alteration in his sentiments, as not at another time to
+adopt different ones upon more reflexion and better information;
+therefore, though he has at present little or no doubt of what he
+asserts (taken upon the principles laid down) he shall hold himself
+totally freed from any necessity of defending the contents of this
+publication if brought into controversy; and as he has no desire of
+making converts, hopes he shall not himself be marked out as an object
+of persecution.
+
+Speculative points have always been esteemed fair matters for a free
+discussion. The religion established in this country is not the
+religion of Nature, but the religion of Moses and Jesus, with whom the
+writer has nothing to do. He trusts therefore he shall not be received
+as a malevolent disturber of such common opinions as are esteemed to
+keep in order a set of low wretches so inclinable to be lawless. At
+least, if he attempts to substitute better foundations for morality,
+malevolence can be no just charge. Truth is his aim; and no professors
+of religion will allow their system to be false. Or if he should be
+thought too bold a speculator, such of the ecclesiastics as will be his
+opponents may rather laugh at him than fear him. They have a thousand
+ways of making their sentiments go down with the bulk of mankind, to
+one this poor writer has. They are an army ready marshalled for the
+support of their own thesis; they are in the habit of controversy;
+pulpits are open to them as well as the press; and while the present
+author will be looked upon as a miracle of hardiness for daring to put
+his name to what he publishes, they can without fear or imputation lift
+up their heads; and should they even be known to transgress the bounds
+of good sense or politeness, they will only be esteemed as more zealous
+labourers in their own vocation.
+
+
+
+
+
+PREFATORY ADDRESS.
+
+
+Dr. Priestley,
+
+Your Letters addressed to a Philosophical Unbeliever I perused, not
+because I was a Philosopher or an Unbeliever; it were presumption to
+give myself the former title, and at that time I certainly did not
+deserve the latter; but as I was acquainted with another, who in
+reality, as far as I and others who know him can judge, deserves the
+title of a Philosopher and is neither ashamed nor afraid of that of an
+Unbeliever, I conceived them apt to be sent to my friend, and when I
+presented them to him, he said he was the person whom he should suppose
+you meant to address, if you had a particular person in view; but he
+had too much understanding of the world, though much abstracted from
+the dregs of it, not to conceive it more probable that you meant your
+Letters to be perused by thinking men in general, Believers and
+Unbelievers, to confirm the former in their creed, and to convert the
+latter from their error. You shall speedily know the effect they have
+had in both ways. For myself I must inform you that I was brought up a
+Believer from my infancy; a Theist, if a Christian is such; for I
+suppose the word will be allowed, though the equivalent term of Deist
+is so generally reprobated by Christians; I had before my eyes the
+example of a most amiable parent; a moral man, a Christian undoubtedly;
+who, when I have been attending upon him, as much from affection as
+from duty upon a sick and nearly dying bed, has prayed I might be
+stedfast in the faith he held, in accents still sounding in my
+intellectual ear; a parent, whom for his virtues and love of his
+offspring, like a Chinese, I am tempted to worship, and I could exclaim
+with the first of poets,
+
+          _"Erit ille mihi semper Deus."_
+
+With such habits of education then, such fervent advice and such
+reverence for my instructor, what can have turned me from my belief;
+for I confess I am turned? Immorallity it is not; that I assert has not
+preceded my unbelief, and I trust never will follow it; there has not
+indeed yet been time for it to follow; whether it is a probable
+consequence will presently be discussed; but it is _thought_, free
+thought upon the subject; when I began freely to think I proceeded
+boldly to doubt; your Letters gave me the cause for thinking, and my
+scepticism was exchanged for conviction; not entirely by the perusal of
+your Letters; for I do not think they would quite have made me an
+Atheist! but by attention to that answer from my friend, which I have
+his permission to subjoin.
+
+In mentioning that doubts arose by reading your very Letters, which
+were written to eradicate all doubts, let me not accuse you of being
+unequal to the task assumed. I mean no such charge. You have in my
+opinion been fully equal to the discussion, and have bandied the
+argument ably, pleasingly and politely. I am certain from the extracts
+you have made from Dr. Clarke, the first of other Divines, I should
+have been converted from my superstition by his reasoning, even without
+perusal of an answer: I pay you however the compliment of having only
+brought me to doubt, and I find I am not the only person who have been
+led to disbelieve by reading books expressly written to confirm the
+Believer. Stackhouse's Comment upon the Bible, and Leland's View of
+Deistical Writers have perhaps made as many renegado's in this country
+as all the allurements of Mahometanism has in others. What can be said
+to this? They were both undoubtedly men of abilities, and meant well to
+the cause they had to support. All that I shall observe upon the matter
+is, that what cannot bear discussion cannot be true. Reasoning in other
+sciences is the way to arrive at truth: the learned for a while may
+differ, but argument at last finds its force, and the controversy
+usually ends in general conviction. Reasoning upon the science of
+divinity will equally have its weight, and all men of letters would
+long ago have got rid of all superstitious notions of a Deity, but that
+men of letters are frequently men of weak nerves; such as Dr. Johnson
+is well known to be, that great triumph to religionists; it requires
+courage as well as sense to break the shackles of a pious education;
+but if merely a resolve to reason upon their force can break them, what
+can we observe in conclusion but
+
+          _"Magnus est veritas et prevalebit."_
+
+That religion or belief of a Deity cannot bear the force of argument is
+well known by Divines in general, is manifest by their annexing an idea
+of reproach to the very term of arguing upon the subject. These arguers
+they call Free-thinkers, and this appellation has obtained, in the
+understanding of pious believers, the most odious disgrace. Yet we
+cannot argue without thinking; nor can we either think or argue to any
+purpose without freedom. Therefore free-thinking, so far from being a
+disgrace, is a virtue, a most commendable quality. How absurd, and how
+cruel it is in the professors of divinity, to address the understanding
+of men on the subject of their belief, and to upbraid those very men
+who shall exercise their understanding in attending to their arguments!
+No tyranny is greater than that of ecclesiastics. These chain down our
+very ideas, other tyrants only confine our limbs. They invite us to the
+argument, yet damn us to eternal punishment for the use of reason on
+the subject. They give to man an essence distinct from his corporeal
+appearance and this they call his soul, a very ray and particle of the
+Divine Being; the principal faculty of this soul they allow to be that
+of reasoning, and yet they call reason a dark lanthorn, an erroneous
+vapour, a false medium, and at last the very instrument of another
+fancied Being of their own to lead men into their own destruction.
+_"In the image of himself made he man."_ A favourite text with
+theologians; but surely they do not mean that this God Almighty of
+theirs has got a face and person like a man. No; that they exclaim
+against, and, when we push them for the resemblance, they confess
+it is in the use of reason; it is in the soul.
+
+I am aware that I am not here to mix questions of Christianity with the
+general question of a Divinity; subjects of a very distinct enquiry,
+and which in the Letters to a Philosophical Unbeliever are very
+carefully separated. The subject of revelation is indeed promised
+afterwards to be taken up, provided the argument in favour of Natural
+Religion meets with a good reception. How, Dr. Priestley, you can judge
+of that reception I am at a loss to know, otherwise than by the number
+of editions you publish. It is then in the sum total just as much as if
+you had said, "provided this book sells well I will write another." Yet
+it may be sold to many such readers as I have been, though you will
+hardly call such reception good. You that have wrote so much, to whom
+it is so easy to write more, who profess a belief of revelation, such a
+laborious enquirer, and so great a master of the art of reasoning,
+should rather have engaged at once to prove in a subsequent publication
+the truth of revealed religion in arguments, as candid and as fairly
+drawn as those you have used in proof of a Deity independent of
+revelation. Different as I am in qualifications from you, not very
+learned, far from industrious, unused to publish, I do now promise
+that when you shall have brought into light your intended letters in
+behalf of revelation I will answer them. I hope you will take it as an
+encouragement to write that you are sure you shall have an answer. I
+mean you should, and I am sure I shall think myself greatly honoured if
+you will descend so far as to reply to my present answer. I know you
+have been used in controversies to have the last word, and in this I
+shall not baulk your ambition; for notwithstanding any defect of my
+plea in favour of atheism I mean to join issue upon your replication,
+and by no means, according to the practice and language of the lawyers,
+to put in a rejoinder. Should your arguments be defectively answered by
+me, should your learning and your reasoning be more conspicuous than
+mine, I shall bear your triumph without repining.
+
+I declare I am rather pleased there are so few atheists than at all
+anxious to make more. I triumph in my superior light. I am like the Jew
+or the Bramin who equally think themselves privileged in their superior
+knowledge of the Deity. With me and with my friend the comparison holds
+by way of contrast, for we are so proud in our singularity of being
+atheists that we will hardly open our lips in company, when the
+question is started for fear of making converts, and so lessening our
+own enjoyment by a numerous division of our privilege with others. It
+has indeed often been disputed, whether there is or ever was such a
+character in the world as an atheist. That it should be disputed is to
+me no wonder. Every thing may be, and almost every thing has been
+disputed. There are few or none who will venture openly to acknowledge
+themselves to be atheists. I know none among my acquaintance, except
+that one friend, to whom as a Philosophical Unbeliever I presented your
+Letters, and to whose answer I only mean this address as an
+introduction. I shall therefore not enter here into the main argument
+of Deity or no Deity. My address is only preliminary to the subject;
+but I do not therefore think myself precluded from entering into some
+considerations that may be thought incidental to it. I mean such
+considerations as whether immorality, unhappiness or timidity
+necessarily do or naturally ought to ensue from a system of atheism.
+But as to the question whether there is such an existent Being as an
+atheist, to put that out of all manner of doubt, I do declare upon my
+honour that I am one. Be it therefore for the future remembered, that
+in London in the kingdom of England, in the year of our Lord one
+thousand seven hundred and eighty-one, a man has publickly declared
+himself an atheist. When my friend returned me your Letters, addressing
+me with a grave face he said, "I hope, if you have any doubts, these
+Letters will have as good effect upon you as they have had upon me."
+My countenance brightened up and I replied, "You are then, my friend,
+convinced ?" "Yes, he said, I am convinced; that is, I am most
+thoroughly convinced there is no such thing as a God." Behold then,
+if we are to be believed, two atheists instead of one.
+
+Another question has been raised "whether a society of atheists can
+exist?" In other words "whether honesty sufficient for the purposes
+of civil society can be insured by other motives than the belief of
+a Deity?" Bayle has handled that question well. [Footnote: _Pensees
+sur la Comete_.] Few who know how to reason (and it is in vain to speak
+or think of those who lay reason out of the case) can fail to be convinced
+by the arguments of Bayle. I shall discuss the question no farther
+than as it is necessarily included in the discussion of some of those
+supposed results of atheism, such as I have before mentioned in the
+instances of immorality, unhappiness and timidity. In my argument
+upon this subject I shall carefully avoid all abuse and ridicule.
+Controversies are apt to be acrimonious. You, Sir, have certainly shewn
+instances to the contrary. You have charity beyond your fellows in the
+ecclesiastical line, and your answerers seem not to me to have a right
+in fair argument to step out of the limits you have prescribed
+yourself. To dispute with you is a pleasure equal almost to that of
+agreeing with another person. You have candour enough to allow it
+possible that an atheist may be a moral man. Where is that other
+ecclesiastic who will allow the same? Your answerers ought also to
+hold themselves precluded from using ridicule in handling this subject.
+I am no great supporter of Lord Shaftesbury's doctrine that ridicule
+is the test of truth. I own truth can never be ridiculous, that is,
+it can never be worthy of laughter, but still it may be laughed at.
+To use the other term, I may say, truth can never be worthy of ridicule,
+but still it may be ridiculed. Just ridicule is a sufficient test
+of truth; but after all we should be driven to an inquiry, upon
+the principles of reasoning, whether the ridicule were just or not.
+Boldness, which is not incompatible with decency and candour, I do
+hold to be an absolute requisite in all speech and argument, where
+truth is the object of inquiry. Therefore when I am asked, whether
+there is a God or no God, I do not mince the matter, but I boldly
+answer there is none, and give my reason for my disbelief; for I
+adopt my friend's answer by the publication of it.
+
+That mischief may ensue to society by such freedom of discussion is
+also another argument for me to consider; I do not say to combat, for
+though I were convinced or could not resist the argument that mischief
+would ensue to society by such a discussion, yet I should think myself
+intitled to enter into it. I have a right to truth, and to publish
+truth, let society suffer or not suffer by it. That society which
+suffers by truth should be otherwise constituted; and as I cannot well
+think that truth will hurt any society rightly constituted, so I should
+rather be inclined to doubt the force of the argument in case atheism
+being found to be truth should apparently be proved prejudicial to such
+a society.
+
+I come unprejudiced to the question, and when I have promised you an
+answer to your future Letters in support of revelation, I have neither
+anticipated your argument nor prejudged the cause. I hold myself open
+to be convinced, and if I am convinced I shall say so, which is equally
+answering as if I denied the force of your observations. In that sense
+only I promise an answer. If I believe I shall say, I do; but I shall
+not believe and tremble, confident as I am, that if I act an honest
+part in life, whether there be a Deity and a future existence or not,
+whatever reason I may have to rejoice in case such ideas be realised, I
+can upon such an issue have none to tremble. I look upon myself to have
+more reason to be temporally afraid than eternally so. Dr. Priestley or
+any other Doctor can put his name boldly to a book in favour of Theism,
+loudly call the supporters of a contrary doctrine to the argument, and
+if no answer is produced, assert their own reasoning to be unanswerable.
+In that sense their sort of reasoning has been frequently unanswerable.
+Here however is an instance of a poor unknown individual, making
+experience of the candour of the ecclesiastics and the equity of
+the laws of England, for he ventures to subscribe his publication with
+his name as well as Dr. Priestley does his Letters, to which this
+publication is an answer. Perhaps he may have cause to repent of his
+hardiness, but if he has, he is equally resolved to glory in his
+martyrdom, as to suffer it. Whatever advantage religion has had in the
+enumeration of it's martyrs, the cause of atheism may boast the same.
+As to the instances of the professors of any particular form of
+religion, or modification of that form, such as Christians or sects of
+Christians, suffering martyrdom for their belief, I shall no more allow
+them to be martyrs for theism than Pagans similarly suffering for their
+belief, shall I call martyrs for atheism. Theism very likely has had
+it's martyrs. I can instance one I think in Socrates, and I shall
+mention Vanini as a martyr for atheism. The conduct of those two great
+men in their last moments may be worth attending to. The variety of
+other poor heretical wretches, who have been immolated at the shrine of
+absurdity for all the possible errors of human credence, let them have
+their legendary fame. I put them out of the scale in this important
+inquiry.
+
+Not that I really think the argument to be much advanced by naming the
+great supporters of one opinion or of another. In mathematics,
+mechanics, natural philosophy, in literature, taste, and politics the
+sentiments of great men of great genius are certainly of weight. There
+are some subjects capable of demonstration, many indeed which the
+ingenuity of one man can go farther to illustrate than that of another.
+The force of high authority is greater in the three former sciences
+than in the latter. Theism and Atheism I hold to be neither of them
+strictly demonstrable. You, Dr. Priestley, agree with me in that. Still
+I hold the question capable of being illustrated by argument, and I
+should hold the authority of great men's names to be of more weight in
+this subject, were I not necessarily forced to consider that all
+education is strongly calculated to support the idea of a Deity; by
+this education prejudice is introduced, and prejudice is nothing else
+than a corruption of the understanding. Certain principles, call them,
+if you please, data, must be agreed upon before any reasoning can take
+place. Disputants must at least agree in the ideas which they annex to
+the language they use. But when prejudice has made a stand,
+argumentation is set at so wide a distance, through a want of fixt data
+to proceed upon, that attention is in vain applied to the dispute.
+Besides, the nature of the subject upon which this prejudice takes
+place, is such, that the finest genius is nearly equally liable to an
+undue bias with the most vulgar. To question with boldness and
+indifference, whether an individual, all-forming, all-seeing and
+all-governing Being exists, to whom, if he exists, we may possibly be
+responsible for our actions, whose intelligence and power must be
+infinitely superior to our own, requires a great conquest of former
+habitude, a firmness of nerves, as well as of understanding; it will
+therefore be no great wonder, if such men as Locke and Newton can be
+named among the believers in a Deity. They were christians as well as
+theists, so that their authority goes as far in one respect as in the
+other. But if the opinions of men of great genius are to have weight,
+what is to be said of modern men of genius? You, Sir, are of opinion
+that the world is getting wiser as well as better. There is all the
+reason in the world it should get wiser at least, since wisdom is only
+a collection of experience, and there must be more experience as the
+world is older. Modern Philosophers are nearly all atheists. I take the
+term atheist here in the popular sense. Hume, Helvetius, Diderot,
+D'Alembert. Can they not weigh against Locke and Newton, and even more
+than Locke and Newton, since their store of knowledge and learning was
+at hand to be added to their own, and among them are those who singly
+possessed equal science in mathematics as in metaphysics? It is not
+impossible, perhaps not improbable, from his course of learning and
+inquiries, that if Dr. Priestley had not from his first initiation into
+science been dedicated for what is called the immediate service of God,
+he himself might have been one of the greatest disprovers of his
+pretended divinity.
+
+In England you think, Sir, that atheism is not prevalent among men of
+free reasoning, though you acknowledge it to be much so in other
+countries. It is not the first time it has been observed that the
+greater the superstition of the common people the less is that of men
+of letters. In the heart of the Papal territories perhaps is the
+greatest number of atheists, and in the reformed countries the greatest
+number of deists. Yet it is a common observation, especially by
+divines, that deism leads to atheism, and I believe the observation is
+well founded. I hardly need explain here, that by deism in this sense
+is meant a belief in the existence of a Deity from natural and
+philosophical principles, and a disbelief in all immediate revelation
+by the Deity of his own existence. Such is the force of habit, that it
+is by degrees only, that even men of sense and firmness shake off one
+prejudice after another. They begin by getting rid of the absurdities
+of all popular religions. This leaves them simple deists, but the force
+of reasoning next carries them a step farther, and whoever trusts to
+this reasoning, devoid of all fear and prejudice, is very likely to end
+at last in being an atheist. Nor do I admit it to be an argument either
+for Revelation or Natural Religion, that the same turn for speculation
+that would convert a christian into a theist, will carry him on to be
+an atheist, though I know the argument has been often used. If upon
+sick beds or in dying moments men revert to their old weakness and
+superstitions, their falling off may afford triumph to religionists;
+for my part I care not so much for the opinions of sick and dying men,
+as of those who at the time are strong and healthy. But in the opinion
+of the one or the other I put no great stress. My faith is in
+reasoning, for though ridicule is not a complete test of truth,
+reasoning I hold certainly to be so. I own belief may be imprest on the
+mind otherwise than by the force of reason. The mind may be diseased.
+All I shall say is that though I have formerly believed many things
+without reason, and even many against it, as is very common, I hope I
+shall never more. My mind (I was going to say, thank God) is sane at
+present, and I intend to keep it so. I am aware that at the expression
+just used some will exclaim in triumph, that the poor wretch could not
+help thinking of his God at the same time he was denying him. The
+observation would hold good, if it were not that we often speak and
+write unpremeditately and though what is in this manner unpremeditately
+expressed upon a revision should be certainly expunged, yet I chuse to
+leave the expression to shew the force of habit.
+
+In fear lies the origin of all fancied deities, whether sole or
+numberless.
+
+          _Primus in orbe Deos fecit Timor._
+
+But the great debasement of the human mind is evidenced in the instance
+of attributing a merit to belief, which has come at last to be stiled a
+virtue, and is dignified by the name of faith, that most pitiful of all
+human qualities. When the apostle spoke of faith, hope and charity, he
+might as well have exclaimed the least of the three is faith, as the
+greatest is charity.
+
+One enthusiast cries out _un Roi_ and another _un Dieu_. The reality of
+the king I admit, because I feel his power. Against my feeling and my
+experience I cannot argue, for upon these sensations is built all
+argument. But not all the wondrous works of the creation, as I hear the
+visible operations of nature called, convince me in the least of the
+existence of a Deity. By nature I mean to express the whole of what I
+see and feel, that whole, I call self-existent from all eternity; I
+admit a principle of intelligence and design, but I deny that principle
+to be extraneous from itself. My creed in fine is the same with that of
+the Roman poet;
+
+          _"Deus est ubicunque movemur."_
+
+If then I am admitted to explain my deity in this sense, I am not an
+atheist, nor can any one else in the world be such. The _vis naturae_,
+the perpetual industry, intelligence and provision of nature must be
+apparent to all who see, feel or think. I mean to distinguish this
+active, intelligent and designing principle, inherent as much in matter
+as the properties of gravity or any elastic, attractive or repulsive
+power, from any extraneous foreign force and design in an invisible
+agent, supreme though hidden lord and maker over all effects and
+appearances that present themselves to us in the course of nature. The
+last supposition makes the universe and all other organised matter a
+machine made or contrived by the arbitrary will of another Being, which
+other Being is called God; and my theory makes a God of this universe,
+or admits no other God or designing principle than matter itself and
+its various organisations.
+
+The inquiry is said to be important. But why is it so! All truth is
+important. It is a question of little importance, merely whether a man
+had a maker or no, although it is of great importance to disprove the
+existence of such a Deity as theologians wish to establish, because
+appearances in the world go against it. Supposing however that it was
+granted, that the question, whether there is a Deity or not, was as
+little important as other truths, yet the question becomes important
+with this reflexion, that other events may follow as deductions; such
+as a particular providence, or a future state of rewards and
+punishments; but whether such deductions or either of them necessarily
+follow may well be queried. As to a particular providence you give up
+the reality of it, and I give it up too. But I cannot give up the
+argument, that if there were a God with all his allowed attributes of
+wisdom, power and justice, there ought to be a particular providence to
+counteract the general laws of nature, in favour of those who defend
+the interposition. Though the Deity should not interfere unless there
+be a worthy cause, agreeable to the Horation rule,
+
+          _"Nec Deus interfuit nisi vindice nodus;"_
+
+Yet surely from the same principles it should follow that the Deity
+ought to interfere where there is a worthy cause. Here however arises
+another dilemma, for if the Deity has really those attributes of power
+and justice, there would never have been occasion for such temperaneous
+interpositions. A particular providence must indeed prove one of these
+two principles, either that God was imperfect in his design, or that
+inert matter is inimical to the properties of God. If that wished for
+interposition of the Deity is put off to a future existence, I cannot
+help observing, that future day has been already a long while waited
+for in vain, and any delay destroys some one attribute or other of the
+Deity. He wants justice, or he wants the power, or the will to do good
+and be just. That a future state of rewards and punishments may however
+exist without a Deity, you, Dr. Priestley, allow to be no impossibility.
+It may indeed be argued with apparent justness, that a principle of
+reviviscence may as well be admitted as a principle of production in
+the first instance: and as to rewards and punishments, judgement may be
+rendered, as well as now, by Beings less than Deities. For my part I
+firmly wish for such a future state, and though I cannot firmly believe
+it, I am resolved to live as if such a state were to ensue. This seems,
+I own, like doubting, and doubting may be said to be a miserable state
+of anxiety. "Better be confident than unhinged; better confide in
+ignorance than have no fixed system." So it may be argued; but I think
+the result will be as people feel. Those who do not feel bold enough,
+to be satisfied with their own thoughts, may abandon them and adopt the
+thoughts of others. For my part I am content with my own; and not the
+less so because they do not end in certainty upon matters, from the
+nature of them, beyond the complete reach of human intelligence.
+
+There is nothing in fact important to human nature but happiness, which
+is or ought to be the end or aim of our being. I mean self-happiness;
+but fortunately for mankind, such is by nature our construction, that
+we cannot individually be happy unless we join also in promoting the
+happiness of others. Should immorality, timidity or other base
+principles arise from atheism it tends immediately, I will own, to the
+unhappiness of mankind. If it is asked me, "why am I honest and
+honourable?" I answer, because of the satisfaction I have in being so.
+"Do all people receive that satisfaction?" No, many who are ill
+educated, ill-exampled and perverted, do not. I do, that is enough for
+me. In short, I am well constructed, and I feel I can therefore act an
+honest and honourable part without any religious motive. Did I
+perceive, that belief in a Deity produced morality or inspired courage,
+I might be prompted to confess, that the contrary would ensue from
+atheism. But the bulk of the world has long believed, or long pretended
+to believe in a Deity, yet morality and every commendable quality seem
+at a stand. The believer and the unbeliever we often see equally base,
+equally immoral. Superstition is certainly only the excess of religion.
+That evidently is attended often with immorality and cowardice. I am
+tempted to say, from observation, that the belief of a Deity is apt to
+drive mankind into vice and baseness; but I check myself in the
+assertion, upon considering that very few indeed are those who really
+believe in a Deity out of such as pretend to do so. It is impossible
+for an intellectual being to believe firmly in that of which he can
+give no account, or of which he can form no conception. I hold the
+Deity, the fancied Deity, at least, of whom with all his attributes
+such pompous descriptions are set forth to the great terror of old
+women and the amusement of young children, to be an object of which we
+form (as appears when we scrutinise into our ideas) no conception and
+therefore can give no account. It is said, after all this, that men do
+still believe in such a Deity, I then do say in return, they do not
+make use of their intellects. The moment we go into a belief beyond
+what we feel, see and understand, we might as well believe in
+will-with-a-whisp as in God. But I would fix morality upon a better
+basis than belief in a Deity. If it has indeed at present no other
+basis, it is not morality, it is selfishness, it is timidity; it is the
+hope of reward, it is the dread of punishment. For a great and good
+man, shew me one who loves virtue because he finds a pleasure in it,
+who has acquired a taste for that pleasure by considering what and
+where happiness is, who is not such a fool as to seek misery in
+preference to happiness, whose honour is his Deity, whose conscience
+is his judge. Put such a man in combat against the superstitious son
+of Spain or Portugal, it were easy to say who would shew the truest
+courage. The question might be more voluminously discussed, but I feel
+already proof of conviction; if you, Dr. Priestley, do not, perhaps
+some other readers may. I have nothing to do with men of low minds.
+They will always have their religion or pretence of it, but I am
+mistaken if it is not the gallows or the pillory that more govern
+their morals than the gospel or the pulpit.
+
+After all, atheism may be a system only for the learned. The ignorant of
+all ages have believed in God. The answer of a Philosophical Unbeliever
+though written in the vulgar tongue may probably not reach the vulgar.
+If argument had prevailed they were long converted from their
+superstitious belief. The sentiments of atheistical philosophers have
+long been published. If mischief therefore could ensue to society from
+such free discussions, that mischief society must long have felt. I
+think truth should never be hid, but few are those who mind it. I will
+therefore take upon myself but little importance though I have presumed
+to preface an answer from a Philosophical Unbeliever to Letters which
+you, Dr. Priestley have written. If you deem that answer detrimental to
+the interests of society, you will recollect that you invite the
+proposal of objections and promise to answer all as well as you can. If
+you should happen to be exasperated by the freedom of the language or
+the contrariety of the sentiment, this answer will gain weight in
+proportion as you lose in the credit of a tolerant Divine. Therefore if
+you reply at all, reply with candour and with coolness; heed the matter
+and not the man, though I subscribe my name, and am
+
+     Reverend Sir,
+     Your friend, admirer, and humble servant,
+     WILLIAM HAMMON.
+
+_Oxford-Street, No._ 418.
+_Jan._ 1, 1782.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+               ANSWER FROM A PHILOSOPHICAL UNBELIEVER.
+
+
+It is the general fashion to believe in a God, the maker of all things,
+or at least to pretend to such a belief, to define the nature of this
+existing Deity by the attributes which are given to him, to place the
+foundation of morality on this belief, and in idea at least, to connect
+the welfare of civil society with the acknowledgement of such a Being.
+Few however are those, who being questioned can give any tolerable
+grounds for their assertions upon this subject, and hardly any two
+among the learned agree in their manner of proving what each will
+separately hold to be indisputably clear. The attributes of a Deity are
+more generally agreed upon, though less the subject of proof, than his
+existence. As to morality, those very people who are moral will not
+deny, they would be so though there were not a God, and there never yet
+has been a civil lawgiver, who left crimes to be punished by the author
+of the universe; not even the profanation of oaths upon the sacredness
+of which so much is built in society, and which yet is said to be a
+more immediate offence against the Deity than any other that can be
+named.
+
+The method which Dr. Priestley has taken to prove the existence of
+a God, is by arguing from _effect_ to _cause_. He explodes that other
+pretended proof _a priori_ which has so much raised the fame of
+Dr. Clarke among other theologians. As to the attributes of the Deity,
+Dr. Priestley is not quite so confident in his proofs there; and the
+most amiable one, the most by mortals to be wished for, the _benevolence_
+of God he almost gives up, or owns at least there is not so much proof
+of it as of his other attributes. His observations are divided into
+several Letters, this is one answer given to the whole; for it would be
+to no purpose to reply to topics upon which the writers are agreed.
+What therefore is not contradicted here, Dr. Priestley may in general
+take to be allowed; but to obviate doubts and to allow his argument
+every force, it may be fairer perhaps to recite at full length what in
+this answer is allowed to be true, what is denied as false, what meant
+to be exposed as absurd, and what rejected as assertions without proof,
+inadmissible or inconclusive. The conclusion will contain some
+observations upon the whole.
+
+
+    TRUISMS.
+
+    1. "Effects have their adequate causes."
+
+    2. "Nothing begins to exist without a cause foreign to itself."
+
+    3. "No being could make himself, for that would imply that he
+    existed and did not exist at the same time."
+
+    4. If one horse, or one tree, had a cause, all had."
+
+    5. Something must have existed from all eternity.
+
+    6. "Atoms cannot be arranged, in a manner expressive of the most
+    exquisite design, without competent intelligence having existed
+    somewhere."
+
+    7. "The idea of a supreme author is more pleasing to a virtuous
+    mind, than that of a blind fate and fatherless deserted world."
+
+    8. "The condition of mankind is in a state of melioration, as far as
+    misery arises from ignorance, for as the world grows older it must
+    grow wiser, if wisdom arises from experience."
+
+    9. "All moral virtue is only a modification of benevolence."
+
+    10. "Virtue gives a better chance for happiness than vice."
+
+    11. "No instance of any revival."
+
+    12. "Atheists are not to think themselves quite secure with respect
+    to a future life."
+
+    13. "Thought might as well depend upon the construction of the
+    brain, as upon any invisible substance extraneous to the brain."
+
+    14. "If the works of God had a beginning, there must have been a
+    time when he was inactive."
+
+    15. "Where happiness is wanting in the creation I would rather
+    conclude the author had mist of his design than that he wanted
+    benevolence."
+
+
+    FALSE ASSERTIONS.
+
+    1. "A cause needs not be prior to an effect."
+
+    2. "If the species of man had no beginning, it would not follow that
+    it had no cause."
+
+    3. "A cause may be cotemporary with the effect."
+
+    4. "An atheist must believe he was introduced into the world without
+    design."
+
+
+    ABSURDITIES.
+
+    1. "A general mass of sensation consisting of various elements
+    borrowed from the past and the future."
+
+    2. "Since sensation is made up of past, present, and future, the
+    infant feeling for the moment only, the man recollecting what is
+    past and anticipating the future, and as the present sensation must
+    therefore in time bear a less proportion to the general mass of
+    sensation than it did, so at last all temporary affections, whether
+    of pain or pleasure become wholly inconsiderable."
+
+    3. "The great book of nature and the book of revelation both lie
+    open before us."
+
+    4. "A conclusion above our comprehension."
+
+    5. "A whole eternity already past."
+
+    6. "Since a finite Being cannot be infinitely happy, because he must
+    then be infinite in knowledge and power; and as all limitation of
+    happiness must consist in degree of happiness or mixture of misery,
+    the Deity can alone determine which mode of limitation is best."
+
+    7. "We have reason to be thankful for our pains and distress."
+
+    8. "If the divine Being had made man at first as happy as he can be
+    after all the feelings and ideas of a painful and laborious life, it
+    must have been in violation of all general laws and by a constant
+    and momentary interference of the Deity."
+
+    9. "It is better the divine agency should not be very conspicuous."
+
+    10. "If good prevails on the whole, creation being infinite,
+    happiness must be infinite, and God comprehending the whole, will
+    only perceive the balance of good, and that will be happiness
+    unmixed with misery."
+
+    11. "If a man is happy in the whole he is infinitely happy in the
+    whole of his existence."
+
+    12. "Although all things fall alike to all men and no distinction is
+    made between the righteous and the wicked, and even though the
+    wicked derive an advantage from their vices, yet this is consistent
+    with a state of moral government by a Being of infinite wisdom and
+    power."
+
+    13. "As ploughing is the means of having a harvest, though God has
+    predetermined whether there should be a harvest or not, so prayer is
+    the means of obtaining good from God, although that good is
+    predetermined upon; it is therefore no more absurd to pray than to
+    plough."
+
+    14. "Notwithstanding happiness is the necessary consequence of
+    health, yet man's happiness is more from intellectual than corporeal
+    feelings."
+
+    15. "Evil is necessarily connected with and subservient to good,
+    although in the next world there will be all good and no evil."
+
+    16. "By reason we can discover the necessary existence of a Deity,
+    yet to be a sceptic on that subject is the first step to be a
+    Christian, because reason not sufficiently proving it we fly to
+    revealed truth."
+
+    17. "The power, which a man has by the comprehensiveness of his mind
+    to enjoy the future, has no apparent limits."
+
+    18. "It is of no avail in the argument concerning the existence of a
+    Deity, that we have no conception of him, since it does not imply
+    impossibility of his existence that we have no idea at all upon the
+    subject."
+
+
+    INADMISSIBLE OR INCONCLUSIVE.
+
+    1. "The question of the existence of a Deity is important."
+
+    2. "A Theist has a higher sense of personal dignity than an
+    atheist."
+
+    3. "The conduct of an atheist must give concern to those who are not
+    so."
+
+    4. "An atheist believes himself to be, at his death, for ever
+    excluded from returning life."
+
+    5. "There are more atheists than unbelievers in revelation."
+
+    6. "Men of letters may have the same bias to incredulity as others
+    to credulity, because they are subject to a wrong association of
+    ideas, as well as other persons though in a less degree."
+
+    7. "Whoever first made a thing, for example a chair or a table, must
+    have had an adequate idea of it's nature and use."
+
+    8. "If a table had a designing cause, the tree from whence the wood
+    came, and the man who made the table must have had a designing
+    cause, which comprehended all the powers and properties of trees and
+    men."
+
+    9. "All the visible universe, as far as we can judge, bears the
+    marks of being one work, and therefore must have had a cause of
+    infinite power and intelligence."
+
+    10. "We might as well say a table had no cause, as that the world
+    had none."
+
+    11. "A Being originally and necessarily capable of comprehending
+    itself, it is not improper to call infinite, for we can have no idea
+    of any bounds to it's knowledge or power."
+
+    12. "A series of finite causes cannot possibly be carried back
+    _ad infinitum_."
+
+    13. "Our imagination revolts at the idea of an intellectual soul of
+    the universe, that is, of an intelligence resulting from
+    arrangement."
+
+    14. "The actual existence of the universe compels us to come at last
+    to an _originally existent and intellectual Being_, because if the
+    immediate maker of the universe has not existed from all eternity,
+    he must have derived his being and senses from one who has, and that
+    being we call God."
+
+    15. "God must be present to all his works, if we admit no power can
+    act but where it is, he must therefore exist every where, because
+    his works are every where."
+
+    16. "As no being can unmake or materially change himself (at least
+    none can annihilate himself) so God is unchangeable, for no Being
+    God made can change him and no other Being can exist but what God
+    made."
+
+    17. "Two infinite intelligent beings of the same kind would
+    coincide, therefore there can only be one God."
+
+    18. "Nothing can be more evident, than that plants and animals could
+    not have proceeded from each other from all eternity."
+
+    19. "That happiness is the design of the creation because health is
+    designed and sickness is only an exception, not a general rule is as
+    evident as that the design of the Mill-wright must have been, that
+    his machine should not be obstructed."
+
+    20. "As a state of sickness is comparatively rare with a state of
+    health, happiness the result of health, and the end of the creation
+    happiness, so the end of the creation is already in a great measure
+    answered."
+
+    21. "Pleasure tends to continue and propagate itself, pain to check
+    and exterminate itself."
+
+    22. "As our knowledge and power in respect to shunning pains and
+    procuring pleasures advance with our experience, nothing is wanting
+    to enable us to exterminate all pains, but a continuance of being.
+
+    23. "Our enjoyments continually increase in real value from infancy
+    to old age."
+
+    24. "A future moral distribution is probable, because God is
+    infinitely powerful and wise."
+
+    25. "Since reverence, gratitude, obedience, confidence are duties to
+    men, so they are to God; and as we pray to men, so we should pray to
+    God."
+
+    26. "Prescience, predetermination and infinite benevolence are no
+    argument against prayer to the Deity."
+
+    27. "A wish produced by nature is evidence of the thing wished for,
+    but a future state is wished for, therefore there is evidence of a
+    future state."
+
+    28. "As we have no idea how we came originally to be produced, 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 which is a cause, at least what is an effect to-day
+may be a cause to-morrow, as in the instance of generation; for though
+a son does not beget his father, he too has his offspring in which he
+may be said to live over again, and if we are to argue only from
+experience, most probably that alone is the resurrection and the life
+to come. But if it is contended that our experience relates only to
+finite causes, or causes incapable of comprehending themselves, it must
+at the same time be allowed, that all our reasoning is founded only on
+experience. This Dr. P. at least allows even while he keeps reasoning
+about a Deity, which he calls an infinite cause capable of comprehending
+itself, though nobody is capable of comprehending it, and of which we
+therefore can have no experience. Yet he will assert, that _thinking_
+persons seldom are convinced by _thinking_. This is odd language for a
+reasoner. When another philosopher or divine attempts to prove a God in
+their own way, Dr. Priestley can readily see his fallacies and
+absurdities. Dr. Clarke, the former great champion of God Almighty, is
+made very light of. He thought, foolish man, to prove the existence of
+a Deity merely by our having an idea of that existence, which would go
+to prove the truth of every unnatural conceit that ever entered into
+the heart of man; and contended farther that it would be equally absurd
+to suppose no Deity as two and two did not make four. It would indeed
+be absurd, says Dr. Priestley provided we agreed that the universe is a
+_caused_ existence, for God is the name we give for the cause of the
+universe, which in such case must exist. It is only denying that the
+universe is a caused existence, and then the absurdity is taken away.
+Dr. Priestley, for the sake of making Dr. Clarke absurd, will readily
+allow the denial capable of being made; and for the same purpose he
+seems gravely to have taken upon himself to prove that school-boy's
+difficulty, that two and two do make four, for he says, that four is
+the term agreed upon in language to be given to the sum total of two
+and two, and that to deny the Deity is at least not so absurd as to say
+that two and two do not make four.
+
+Dr. Priestley says he finds no difficulty in excluding every thing from
+the mind except space and duration. He allows then at least, that there
+is no manifest absurdity in supposing there is no Deity, for nothing
+can be proved by reasoning if the conclusion can be denied without
+absurdity, nor can there be a manifest absurdity in denying the
+existence of what there is no difficulty in excluding from the mind.
+Yet after all he adds (somewhat inconsistently) that we cannot exclude
+the idea of a Deity, if we do not exclude an existent universe. This
+Deity he defines to be a most simple Being; simple and infinite; terms
+which but ill agree together.
+
+The infinite or boundless existence of this pretended Deity is a
+property more insisted upon than any other, and whatever other
+properties are given to him they are all in the infinite degree. The
+properties alledged to be proved are, eternity, infinite knowledge and
+power, unchangeableness, unity, omnipotence, action from all eternity,
+and independence. Benevolence and moral government are also ascribed to
+him but confessedly with a less degree of certainty, though the most
+desireable of all his given properties. Upon the subject of benevolence,
+Dr. Priestley only advances, that where it is not proved by the
+happiness of his creatures to exist, he would rather chuse to conclude
+he mist of his design, that is, he wanted power or knowledge, than that
+he wanted benevolence. If he means to argue that it is more rational to
+conclude this Deity wanted power and knowledge than that he wanted
+benevolence, and because Dr. Priestley fancies himself to have proved
+the Deity cannot want the two former, he concludes the Deity cannot
+want the latter, as the less probable for him to be deficient in, his
+argument is no more a truism. As a wish, that the Deity may not want
+benevolence, in that sense let him take it as agreed upon. He allows
+that misery in the human species proves malevolence in the Deity, and
+happiness the contrary. All the proof adduced in favour of benevolence
+is in asserting that throughout the universe, good is more predominant
+than evil. The infinite extent of benevolence he will allow incapable
+of proof; but then it is said that the evils which mankind endure are
+not so great as might be inflicted upon them; that virtue to vice,
+happiness to misery, health to sickness bear at least equal proportions.
+That lesser evils exist instead of greater is indeed but a poor proof
+in the favour of the benevolence of an all-powerful Being. Or grant,
+that good is more predominant than evil, this surely is no proof
+neither of the benevolence of a kind and all-powerful Being. Yet
+Dr. Priestley adds that the general benevolence of the Deity is
+unquestionable. How 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 the creation" because health
+is designed, and sickness is only an exception, not a general rule."
+Many a healthy man has certainly been unhappy, or else had a man better
+study health than virtue. If the mill-wright make a poor machine he is
+a poor workman; God in like manner designing health and introducing
+sickness is but a poor physician. In another place Dr. Priestley having
+considered, that he had asserted that human sensations arise from ideas
+of the past and future as well as the present, finds himself obliged to
+alter his notions of happiness, so far as to say that happiness is more
+intellectual than corporeal. But it is rather extraordinary to assert
+at the same time, that happiness is the necessary consequence of
+health, and that happiness is more from intellectual than corporeal
+feelings. Surely health, if any thing, is corporeal. Another curious
+fancy about pain and happiness is, that our finite nature not admitting
+infinite or unlimited happiness we must leave it to the wisdom of the
+Deity to determine which is best for us (since happiness must be
+diminished) a little pain to be added to it or somewhat of happiness to
+be taken away. It hardly requires the skill of a benevolent Deity to
+determine which is best for the creatures he has made (and whom he
+wishes to be as happy as their finite nature will admit) to lessen
+their degree of happiness or mix therein a proportion of misery. To
+conclude he asks, "how it is possible to teach children caution, but by
+feeling pain?" It is easy to allow in answer, that it might not perhaps
+be possible in us. But he is arguing about the benevolence of a Deity.
+It was possible, he will allow, in him to have given these children
+knowledge without pain, at least if he continues to him the attribute
+he allows of omnipotence.
+
+Next he observes that parents suspend at times their benefits to their
+offspring, when persuaded they are not for their good; so does the
+Deity. But before this argument holds he must therefore say, it is not
+for the good of man to be made happy now, and that the Deity can be
+infinitely benevolent without willing either infinite or universal
+happiness. Take the argument any way, it must go against his
+benevolence or his power; and the same observations hold as to his love
+of justice, whilst he is so tardy in punishing offenders.
+
+After observing that things are in an improving state, Dr. Priestley
+allows, that the moral government of the universe is not perfect. From
+thence he proceeds to assert, that atheists may believe it within the
+course of nature, that men as moral agents may after death be
+re-produced, and therefore that there may be a future state though
+there be no God, because he reasons it may be in the course of nature.
+This allows that the course of nature may be as it is without a God,
+and that there is therefore no _natural_ proof of a Deity. His farther
+argument on this head is, that "things usually happen in a state of
+nature that are proper. A future state is proper. (To carry on the
+supposed state of melioration and complete the moral government of the
+universe.) It is therefore probable." This is an argument perhaps more
+of wish than probability, but let it have such force as belongs to it.
+It is not the wish of the answerer by supporting atheism to give
+encouragement to immorality, but should he unwarily or with weak minds
+do so, the argument of the Deity's existence is independent of such
+considerations. It were better to seek another support for morality
+than a belief in God; for the moral purpose in believing a Deity (an
+invisible Being, maker of all, our moral governor, who will hereafter
+take cognizance of our conduct,) is not a little checked by
+considering, that he leaves the proof of his very existence so
+ambiguous, that even men with a habit of piety upon them cannot but
+have their doubts, whilst on this existence so much of the moral
+purpose depends. If this is not an argument against the morality of a
+Deity, it is at all events one against his _infinite_ morality though
+moral is an attribute to be given to him in the infinite degree as much
+as any other.
+
+It is said, infinite intelligence must have procured a necessary
+fitness of things, and that this forms morality. "His will could not
+be biassed by other influence; therefore he must have willed morality,
+because necessarily fit." Then comes infinite power, and yet no
+morality in the world or a very small portion of it. We cannot to any
+purpose, do what we will, argue against experience. That it must be,
+yet that it is not. What must be, will be. If it is not, there is no
+_must_ in the case.
+
+It is next said, that virtue gives a better chance for happiness than
+vice. This also is but a weak argument for the moral government of the
+universe, unless it be for a moral government by chance. Virtue ought
+to be the certain and immediate parent of happiness, if a moral
+governor existed with an 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_, but _sui generis_,
+merely applicable to the Deity.
+
+From the imperial infinite intelligence of the Deity an argument is
+formed of his unity. Dr. Priestley says, "that two _infinite_
+intelligent Beings would coincide, and therefore that there can only be
+one such Being." Two parallels will never coincide. That is one of the
+first axioms of Euclid, in whom Dr. Priestley believes as much as in
+his bible. If the Beings are infinite in extent and magnitude they must
+certainly coincide, but if they are only infinite in intelligence, it
+does not seem to be necessary that they should.
+
+The ubiquity of God is proved in this short way: "God made every thing,
+God controuls every thing. No power can act but where it is. Therefore
+God is present every where." The workman must certainly be present at
+his work, but when the work is done he may go about other business. If
+all the properties of matter, such as gravity, elasticity and other
+such existed only by the perpetual leave and agency of the Deity, it
+may be argued he is in all places where matter is. Space, empty space
+will still exist without him. In this mode of proof Dr. Priestley must,
+contrary to the Newtonian system argue for a _Plenum_, before he proves
+the ubiquity. He cannot exclude space from his mind, nor can he exclude
+gravity from matter. Yet can he admit matter as well as space to be
+eternal, because he will not allow the inactivity of God." "If God's
+works had a beginning he must have been _for a whole eternity_
+inactive." He seems to have an odd notion of eternity, for he there
+allows it could have an end. The argument would be fairer in concluding
+"he must have been inactive _or doing something else_."
+
+The Deity set up, if not the creator of matter, is at least the matter
+of it, nor will his advocates by any means allow him to be material
+himself. They see some incongruity in admitting one piece of matter to
+be so complete a master of another. However Dr. Priestley and other
+arguers for a Deity would do well to consider, that whatever is not
+matter, is a space that matter may occupy. Therefore if God is not
+matter, and also is not space, he is nothing. Dr. Priestley allows
+matter eternal, and its properties of gravity, elasticity, electricity
+and others equally eternal. He says directly, that matter cannot exist
+without it's perpetually corresponding powers. The adjustment of those
+powers he places in the Deity. But as we never see matter without the
+adjustment of those properties as well as the existence of them, this
+drives him at last to say, the Deity must also have created matter,
+according to his system eternally created it, cotemporarily with
+himself. Ideas absurd and irreconcileable!
+
+Discoursing upon the hypothesis of "a fortuitous concourse of atoms"
+Dr. Priestley asks, "what reason we have to think that small masses of
+matter can have power without communication _ab extra_?" Let this
+question be returned, "have we not reason to think so from attraction
+the most common property in matter." To get rid of this difficulty he
+will not allow an atom of matter to be possessed originally of the most
+simple powers, though he is ready to allow matter to have been eternal.
+A magnet according to this system must sometime have existed without
+its magnetic power. He concludes there must be some original existent
+Being. He shall be allowed many original existent Beings if it pleases
+him. A man may be an originally existent being, as well as any other.
+He is superior to other animals in this world. In like manner there may
+be allowed superior Beings to man (as most probably there are) and yet
+those superior Beings not have made man.
+
+Dr. Priestley will have it, that all bodies are moved by external
+force. That does not seem quite necessary. Motion may as well be
+asserted to be originally a property of matter, or its true natural
+state and rest a deprivation of that property, as that rest should be
+its natural state. Hume thought so and Hume was no great fool,
+notwithstanding Dr. Priestley makes so light of him. In fact matter
+never is, and therefore most probably never was found to be in a state
+of rest. Nor has Dr. Priestley any reason to suppose gravity, elasticity
+and electricity to have been imprest on bodies by a superior Being, and
+not originally inherent in matter, unless to favour his own hypothesis
+of a Deity. He absolutely says matter could not have had those powers
+without a communication from a superior and intelligent Being. If
+matter is perceived in regulated motion, it is added bluntly, that it
+must be by a mover possessed of a competent intelligence, and that a
+Being therefore of such power and intelligence _must_ exist. Whoever
+finds no difficulty in believing the contrary will find as little
+difficulty in Mr. Hume's hypothesis, that motion might as well as other
+powers and properties have been originally inherent in matter, or at
+least have been a necessary result of some matter acting upon another.
+
+It has always been a doubt with Theists, whether they can better prove
+their God's existence by moral or physical considerations. Dr.
+Priestley seems to think the _forte_ of the argument lies in the latter
+proof, and lays particular stress upon his observation respecting cause
+and effect, which therefore cannot here be so readily dismissed. He
+makes great reference to the works of art. Theists are always for
+turning their God into an overgrown man. Anthropomorphites has long
+been a term applied to them. They give him hands and eyes nor can they
+conceive him otherwise than as a corporeal Being. In which, as before
+has been said, they are very right, for there can only be in the world
+body and the space which bodies occupy. But granting this great workman
+to have done so much, is it not quite an incontrovertible proposition,
+that whoever first made a thing, as, for example, a chair or a table,
+must have had an adequate idea of it's nature and use. Dr. Priestley
+speaks more correctly in another part, by saying, he must have been
+_capable_ of comprehending it. The nature and use of things are often
+found out after they are made and by different persons than the makers
+of them. Neither is there any analogy between the works of art, as a
+table or house, and of nature, as a man or tree. Therefore there can be
+no arguing from one to another by analogy. Hume observes that the
+former works are done by reason and design, and the latter by
+generation and vegetation, and therefore arguing from effect to causes,
+it is probable, that the universe is generated or vegetated. At least
+after all the observations about a table, it may be modestly asked,
+whether there is not some difference between a table and the world? The
+Doctor will also find some difficulty in explaining the propriety of
+any argument of analogy between men and metals, which he does not at
+other times scruple to make?
+
+A _gratis_ assertion is first made, that all things we see are effects;
+then because we see one thing caused, every thing must have been
+caused. His conclusion of the argument is still more curious, "because
+every thing was caused there must have been something that was not
+caused." The cause ought to be proportioned to the effect. The effect
+is not infinite. Why then attribute infinity to the cause? This is
+Hume's argument. Priestley calls it shortly unworthy of a philosopher.
+Let others judge! But surely, with all this infinity it may be asked,
+why may not there have been an infinity of causes?
+
+Another argument is, that being unable to account, for what is, by any
+thing visible, we must have recourse to something invisible, and that
+invisible power is what he calls God. Apply this argument to gravity,
+and the external force that is said to cause every stone to fall is
+God. But if nothing visible can to us account for the operations of
+nature, why must we have recourse to what is invisible? Why necessary
+to account at all for them? Or why may not visible things account for
+them, although this person or another cannot tell which?
+
+If nothing can begin to exist of itself or by the energy of material
+nature, it is more consistent to allow a plurality of Deities, than one
+immediate Deity. An equality in a plurality of Deities might be
+objectionable. But that is not at all necessary, rather the contrary;
+and so was the Pagan theory, which is not so absurd as the modern one.
+This universe or mundane system may be the work of one hand, another of
+another, and so on. Where is the absurdity of that? If the universe is
+applied to the solar system, there is an appearance of its being formed
+by one design, and in that stile it might be said to be the work of one
+hand. But this Deity is asserted to be infinite, and to have made all
+other worlds and universes, though it does not appear by any unity of
+design that all other worlds and universes are one work with this.
+
+Dr. Priestley himself allows that reason would drive us to require a
+cause of the Deity. He is himself obliged to conclude, after all his
+reasoning, that we must acquiesce in our inability of having any idea
+on the subject; that is, how God could exist without a prior cause. At
+the same time he says the Deity cannot have a cause, and therefore we
+cannot reason about him. Why then all his own reasoning? We make a
+Deity ourselves, fall down and worship him. It is the molten calf over
+again. Idolatry is still practised. The only difference is that now we
+worship idols of our imagination; before of our hands. "Still we must
+necessarily rest at a Being that is infinite;" that is, when our reason
+drives us to the admission of an infinite cause we must necessarily
+stop finitely in our career. Not content with this conclusion he adds,
+that we cannot help perceiving the existence of this cause, though he
+owns that it is not an object of our conceptions. But even the Theist's
+argument does not necessarily drive us to the admission of an infinite
+cause. The argument is, "because there is a man, and man has
+intelligence, we must necessarily admit of a Being of infinitely
+superior intelligence." Would it not be nearly as well to argue,
+"because there is a goose, therefore there must be a man."
+
+What is there more which hinders a series of finite causes to be
+carried back _ad infinitum_, than that the reasoner or contemplator of
+the course of nature is tired. If this eternal series could not exist,
+a Deity might with some propriety be said to follow. Put the argument
+into a syslogistic form.
+
+"The universe shews design;"
+
+"It is absurd to suppose an infinite succession of finite causes;"
+
+"Therefore there is an uncaused intelligent cause of this universe."
+
+Deny the second assertion and the problem is destroyed. So far from its
+being difficult to suppose an eternity, it is the most difficult thing
+in the world to suppose any thing but an eternity. A mind, not afraid
+to think, will find it the most easy contemplation in the world to
+dwell upon. It is at least a bold assertion, that _nothing can be more
+evident_ than that plants and animals could not have proceeded from each
+other by succession from all eternity. Surely to this may be answered,
+that it is more evident that two and two make four. But Dr. Priestley
+goes on to say, "that the primary cause of a man cannot be a man, any
+more than the cause of a sound can be a sound." Experience shews us all
+sound is an effect of a cause. Does experience shew us more of a man
+than that he came from a man and a woman? To allow therefore that all
+men must have come from a man and a woman is as far as we can argue
+upon the subject, whilst in reasoning we trust to experience. An
+argument is well built upon similarity, therefore it is probable if one
+horse had a cause all horses had. But will not the argument be more
+consonant to itself, in supposing all horses had the same cause, and as
+one is seen to be generated from a horse and a mare so all were from
+all eternity. It were a better argument in favour of a Deity or some
+invisible agent to shew that a new animal came every now and then into
+life, without any body's knowing how or where.
+
+It is allowed by Priestley and all other reasoners, that the most
+capital argument that can be formed in support of any thesis is to be
+built upon experience, or analogy to experience. Yet will many of these
+reasoners, Dr. 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 that the present existence
+of things is the result of the force and energy of nature acting upon
+herself, "why this force does not perpetually operate and produce new
+appearances?" Besides that this question may be retorted upon the
+supporters of a Deity, I am thoroughly persuaded, that this force is
+constantly in action, and that every change which animals and
+vegetables undergo, whether of dissolution or renovation, is a manifest
+and undeniable proof of it. Man, and the other Beings which occupy this
+terrestrial globe, are evidently suited to its present state, and an
+alteration in their habitation, such as that of extreme or excessive
+heat, would inevitably destroy them. This is so certain, that bones of
+animals have been dug up which appertain to no species now existing,
+and which must have perished from an alteration in the system of things
+taking place too considerable for it to endure. Whenever the globe
+shall come to that temperament fit for the life of that lost species,
+whatever energy in nature produced it originally, if even it had a
+beginning, will most probably be sufficient to produce it again. Is not
+the reparation of vegitable life the spring equally wonderful now as
+its first production? Yet this is a plain effect of the influence of
+the sun, whose absence would occasion death by a perpetual winter. So
+far this question from containing, in my opinion, a formidable
+difficulty to the Epicurean system, I cannot help judging the continual
+mutability of things as an irrefragable proof of this eternal energy of
+nature. Those who ask, why the great changes in the state of things are
+not more frequent, would absurdly require them to ensue within the
+short space of their existence, forgetting that millions of ages are of
+no importance to the whole mass of matter, though Beings of some
+particular forms may find a wish and an advantage to prolong the term
+of their duration under that form.
+
+If it is said, Nature or the energy of nature is another name for the
+Deity, then may Dr. Priestley and his answerer shake hands; the one is
+no more an atheist than the other. And if it is observed that the
+Energy of Nature having produced men may be capable of re-producing
+them, so that an atheist is not sure to escape punishment for his
+crimes, it is easy to say in return, neither is a Deist sure. A good
+atheist has no more reason to be afraid to be re-produced than a good
+Deist or a Christian. It may be useful for both of them to be good. If
+necessary let it again be repeated, that it is not at all meant in this
+answer to make atheism a plea or protection for immorality. That is a
+charge long and most unjustly put upon the poor undefended atheist. The
+knowledge of a God and even the belief of a providence are found but
+too slight a barrier against human passions, which are apt to fly out
+as licentiously as they would otherwise have done. All, which this
+creed can in reality produce, scarce goes beyond some exterior
+exercises, which are vainly thought to reconcile man to God. It may
+make men build temples, sacrifice victims, offer up prayers, or perform
+something of the like nature; but never break a criminal intrigue,
+restore an ill gotten wealth, or mortify the lust of man. Lust being
+the source of every crime, it is evident (since it reigns as much among
+idolaters and anthropomorphites, as among atheists) idolaters and
+anthropomorphites must be as susceptible of all of crimes as atheists,
+and neither the one set nor the other could form societies, did not a
+curb, stronger then that of religion, namely human laws, repress their
+perverseness. If no other remedy were applied to vice than the
+remonstrances of divines, a great city such as London, would in a
+fortnight's time, fall into the most horrid disorders. Whatever may be
+the difference of faith, vice predominates alike with the Christian and
+the Jew, with the Deist and the atheist. So like are they in their
+actions, that one would think they copied one another. Religion may
+make men follow ceremonies; little is the inconvenience found in them.
+A great triumph truly for religion to make men baptise or fast? When
+did it make men do virtuous actions for virtue's sake, or practise
+fewer inventions to get rich, where riches could not be acquired
+without poverty to others? The true principle most commonly seen in
+human actions, and which philosophy will cure sooner than religion, is
+the natural inclination of man for pleasure, or a taste contracted for
+certain objects by prejudice and habit. These prevail in whatsoever
+faith a man is educated, or with whatever knowledge he may store his
+mind.
+
+But it will be said, those who commit crimes are atheists at the time
+at least they do so. But an atheist cannot be superstitious, and
+criminals are often so at the very moment of their crimes. Religious
+persuasion men are not doubted to have when they vent their rage upon
+others of a different way of thinking, when they express a dread of
+danger or a zeal for ceremonies. These at least are not virtues; and
+few indeed must be those, who at any time are really Theists, if their
+faith is lost or forgotten every time they have a mind to indulge a
+vitious passion. To support still the efficacy of religion in making
+men virtuous is to oppose metaphysical reasoning to the truth of fact;
+it is like the philosopher denying motion, and being refuted by one of
+his scholars walking across the room. If then it is true, as history
+and the whole course of human life shew it is, that men can still
+plunge themselves into all sorts of crimes, though they are persuaded
+of the truth of religion, which is made to inform them that God
+punishes sin and rewards good actions, it cannot but be suspected that
+religion even encourages crimes, by the hopes it gives of pardon
+through the efficacy of prayer; at all events it must be granted, that
+those who hold up a belief in God as a sufficient proof and character
+of a good life are most egregiously mistaken.
+
+Some Theists may have lighter sense of personal dignity than some
+atheists. If the Theist thinks himself allied to and connected with
+the Deity he may plume himself upon his station; but how apt are
+those worshipers of a God, instead of having a high sense of personal
+dignity, to debase themselves into the most abject beings, dreading
+even the shadow of their own phantom. An atheist feeling himself to be
+a link in the grand chain of Nature, feels his relative importance and
+dreads no imaginary Being. An atheist, who is so from inattention and
+without intelligence, may indeed feel himself as much debased as the
+meanest and most humble Theist.
+
+Another argument against atheists is, that where men are atheists it is
+generally found that their usual turn of thinking and habits of life
+have inclined to make them so. Is not this to be turned upon Theists?
+But granting that the idea of a supreme author is more pleasing, and
+that the argument with respect to the existence or non-existence of a
+God was in _equilibrio_, it is not therefore right to conclude that the
+mind ought to be determined by this or any other bias. Nor is it quite
+clear if there is no God (by which term let it again be noticed, is
+meant a Being of supreme intelligence, the contriver of the material
+universe and yet no part of the material system) that the world in
+which man inhabits is either fatherless or deserted. The wisdom of
+nature supplies in reality what is only hoped for from the protection
+of the Deity. If the world has so good a mother, a father may well be
+spared especially such a haughty jealous, and vindictive one as God is
+most generally represented to be. Dr. Priestley being clear in his
+opinion; that the being of a God is capable of being proved by reason,
+is not so weak as some of his fellow-labourers, who hold the powers of
+reason in so low estimation as to be incapable of themselves to arrive
+at almost any truth. He must however allow, if reason proves a Deity
+and his attributes there was less use of revelation to prove them. But
+the learned advocates of a Deity differ greatly among themselves,
+whether his existence is capable of being ascertained by fixt
+principles of reason. After such a difference and the instance of so
+many great men in all ages, from Democritus downward, who have
+confidently denied the being of a God, whose arguments the learned Dr.
+Cudworth, in the last century, only by fully and fairly stating, with
+all the answers in his power to give (though his zeal in religion was
+never doubted) was thought by other divines to have given a weight to
+atheism not well to be overturned, it is surprising that it should be
+the common belief of this day, that an argument in support of atheism
+cannot stand a moment, and that even no man in his senses can ever hold
+such a doctrine. All that Epicurus and Lucretius have so greatly and
+convincingly said is swept away in a moment by these better reasoners,
+who yet scruple not to declare, with Dr. Priestley, that what they
+reason about is not the subject of human understanding. But let it be
+asked, is it not absurd to reason with a man about that of which that
+same man asserts we have no idea at all? Yet will Dr. Priestley argue,
+and say it is of no importance, whether the person with whom he argues
+has a conception or not of the subject. "Having no ideas includes no
+impossibility," therefore he goes on with his career of words to argue
+about an unseen being with another whom he will allow to have no idea
+of the subject and yet it shall be of no avail in the dispute, whether
+he has or no, or whether he is capable or incapable of having any.
+Reason failing, the passions are called upon, and the imagined God is
+represented at one time, with all the terrors of a revengeful tyrant,
+at another with all the tenderness of an affectionate parent. Shall
+then such a tremendous Being with such a care for the creatures he has
+made, suffer his own existence to be a perpetual doubt? If the course
+of nature does not give sufficient proof, why does not the hand divine
+shew itself by an extraordinary interposition of power? It is allowed
+miracles ought not to be cheap or plenty. One or two at least every
+thousand years might be admitted. But this is a perpetual standing
+miracle, that such a Being as the depicted God, the author of nature
+and all its works, should exist and yet his existence be perpetually in
+doubt, or require a Jesus, a Mahomet or a Priestley to reveal it. Is
+not the writing of this very answer to the last of those three great
+luminaries of religion a proof, that no God, or no _such_ God at least,
+exists. Hear the admirable words of the author of "The System of
+Nature;" _Comment permet il qu'un mortel comme moi ose attaquer ses
+droits, ses titres, son existence meme?_
+
+Dr. Clarke, Mr. Hume and Helvetius, are writers whose arguments for and
+against a Godhead Dr. Priestley has much noted. The former says, "the
+Deity must have been infinite, if self-existent, because all things in
+the universe are made by him." Are all things in the universe infinite?
+Why an infinite maker of a finite work? It is juster to argue, that
+whatever is self-existent must have been eternal. Nor is there any
+great objection to the converse of the proposition properly taken, that
+whatever is not self-existent must have been created and therefore
+cannot have been eternal. If this is fair arguing, matter cannot
+according to Dr. Priestley's system have been created and be eternal
+also. But Dr. Priestley has no inclination to reconcile his opinions
+with those of Dr. Clarke. He has chosen a fairer method, and that is,
+to refute the arguments of former asserters of a Deity as well as to
+establish his own. Dr. Clarke he most effectually exposes where he
+enters upon the subject of space. It seems as if Dr. Clarke, having
+asserted that the Deity necessarily existed, had a mind that nothing
+else should necessarily exist but the Deity; and conscious that space
+at least also necessarily existed, he makes universal space an
+attribute of the Deity. With this reverie in his head he raises a
+syllogism of complete nonsense (_vide Priestley's Letters_, P. 170.)
+where he supposes space to be nothing though he also supposes it to be
+an attribute of the Deity. Making it therefore an attribute of the
+Deity and knowing that space is eternal and unmeasurable he takes upon
+himself thereby also clearly to have proved that the Deity is so.
+Exclude the Deity, space will still exist and still be eternal and
+immense. Dr. Priestley knew well that Dr. Clarke's argument in this
+respect was all a fallacy, and therefore he shews his sense in not
+adopting it. It is in fact an abuse of terms unworthy of a scientific
+reasoner.
+
+The only argument attempted by Dr. Clarke, why the Deity must have
+had no cause, is, because it is necessary he should have none.
+Dr. Clarke says roundly that necessity is the cause of the existence
+of the Deity. This is very near the language of the ancients, who
+held that Fate controuled the Gods. Necessity is therefore the first
+God. Why then any other God than Necessity? What more has Helvetius
+said than that?
+
+It is an old and unanswerable argument that, granting a God and his
+power infinite, whatever he wills is executed; but man and other
+animals are unhappy, therefore he does not will they should be happy.
+Or take the argument the other way and it will equally conclude against
+his power. With regard to Mr. Hume's famous observations upon the
+evidence of miracles, Dr. Priestley thinks to make a short havock of
+them by observing that new, and therefore miraculous appearances, are
+continually presenting themselves; but although such new appearances
+may be instanced, they are not contrary to former experience, only in
+addition to it. With this allusion to Natural Philosophy, Dr. Priestley
+thinks himself in one short sentence to have discussed all Mr. Hume's
+observations upon miracles. _"Which is more likely, that the relater of
+a miracle should have lied or been deceived, or that the thing related
+should have existed contrary to experience prior and subsequent?"_
+Let the force of this observation be considered and believe in the
+history of miracles who can! To give a finishing stroke to poor
+Mr. Hume, Dr. Priestley observes that literary fame was Hume's only
+motive and consolation, as he said himself, in all his laborious
+enquiries and enlightened writings. At this he exclaims, "What gloomy
+prospect and poor comfort he must have had at his death!" If so,
+how much was he the greater man so well to have gone through that
+last scene!
+
+The honour which Dr. Priestley gives to Helvetius, the author of that
+ingenious and satisfactory work intitled "The System of Nature," does
+credit to his own candour. He applauds him for speaking out, he ought
+therefore to applaud this answer for the same reason. It is true he
+seems to have discovered one incongruity in the reasoning of Helvetius.
+The words he imputes to him are, "that nature has no object, because
+nature acts necessarily; man has an object; yet man also acts
+necessarily." In the same way nature might have an object though it
+acted necessarily. But Helvetius adds, that the object which man has is
+a necessary object. The best defence of Helvetius (not in behalf of
+that passage, but of his general system) is to let him speak at large
+for himself; and the following quotation Dr. Priestley and the reader
+may accept as a specimen of the strength and justice of his argument,
+and as the conclusion of this answer.
+
+"Theologians tell us, that the disorder and evil, which is seen in the
+world, is not absolute and real, but relatively and apparently such,
+and does not disprove the divine wisdom and goodness. But may not one
+reply, that the goodness and wonderful order which they so much extol,
+and on which they found their notions of those qualities in God, are in
+a similar way only relative and apparent. If it be only our co-existence
+with the causes which surround us, and our manner of perceiving them,
+that constitute the order of nature for us, and authorise us to attribute
+wisdom and goodness to the maker of what surround us, should not also
+our mode of existence and perception authorise us to call what is
+hurtful to us disorder, and to attribute impotence, ignorance, or
+malice, to that Being which we would suppose to actuate nature.
+
+Some pretend that the supremely wise God can derive goodness and
+happiness to us from the midst of those ills which he permits us to
+undergo in this world. Are these men privy counsellors of the Divinity,
+or on what do they found their romantic hopes? They will doubtless say,
+that they judge of God's conduct by analogy, and that from the present
+appearance of his wisdom and goodness, they have a right to infer his
+future wisdom and goodness. But do not the present appearances of his
+want of wisdom or goodness justify us in concluding, that he will
+always want them? If they are so often manifestly deficient in this
+world, what can assure us that they will abound more in the next? This
+kind of language therefore rests upon no other basis than a prejudiced
+imagination, and signifies, that some men, having without examination,
+adopted an opinion that God is good, cannot admit that he will consent
+to let his creatures remain constantly unhappy. Yet this grand
+hypothesis, of the unalterable felicity of mankind hereafter, is
+insufficient to justify the Divinity in permitting the present sleeting
+and transitory marks of injustice and disorder. If God can have been
+unjust for a moment, he has derogated, during that moment at least,
+from his divine perfection, and is not unchangeably good; his justice
+then is liable to temporary alteration, and, if this be the case, who
+can give security for his justice and goodness continuing unalterable
+in a future life, the notion of which is set up only to exculpate his
+deviation from those qualities in this?
+
+In spite of the experience, which every instant gives the lie to that
+beneficence which men suppose in God, they continue to call him good.
+When we bewail the miserable victims of those disorders and calamities
+that so often overwhelm our species, we are confidently told that these
+ills are but apparent, and that if our short-sighted mind could fathom
+the depths of divine wisdom, we should always behold the greatest
+blessings result from what we denominate evil. How despicable is so
+frivolous an answer! If we can find no good but in such things as
+affect us in a manner which is agreeable and pleasing to our actual
+existence, we shall be obliged to confess that those things which
+affect us, even but for a time, in a painful manner, are as certainly
+evil to us. To vindicate God's visiting mankind with these evils some
+tell us, that he is just, and that they are chastisements inflicted on
+mankind to punish the wrongs he has received from men. Thus a feeble
+mortal has the power to irritate and injure the almighty and eternal
+Being who created this world. To offend any one is, to afflict him,
+to diminish in some degree his happiness, to make him feel a painful
+sensation. How can man possibly disturb the felicity of the
+all-powerful sovereign of nature! How can a frail creature, who
+has received from God his being and his temper, act against the
+inclinations of an irresistable force which never consents to sin and
+disorder? Besides justice, according to the only ideas which we can
+have of it, supposes a fixt desire to render every one his due. But
+theologians constantly preach that God owes us nothing, that the good
+things he affords are the voluntary effects of his beneficence, and
+that without any violence of his equity he can dispose of his creatures
+as his choice or caprice may impel him. In this doctrine I see not the
+smallest shadow of justice, but the most hideous tyranny and shocking
+abuse of power. In fact do we not see virtue and innocence plunged into
+an abyss of misery, while wickedness rears its triumphant head under
+the empire of this God whose justice is so much extalled? "This misery,
+say you, is but for a time." Very well, Sirs, but your God is unjust
+for a time. "He chastises whom he loves (you will say) for their own
+benefit." But if he is perfectly good, why will he let them suffer at
+all? "He does it, perhaps to try them" But, if he knows all things,
+what occasion is there for him to try any? If he is omnipotent, why
+need he vex himself about the vain design any one may form against him?
+Omnipotence ought to be exempt from any such passions, as having
+neither equals nor rivals. But if this God is jealous of his glory, his
+titles and prerogative, why does he permit such numbers of men to
+offend him? Why are any found daring enough to refuse the incense which
+his pride expects? _Why am I a feeble mortal permitted to attack his
+titles, his attributes, and even his existence?_ Is this permission of
+punishment on me for the abuse of his grace and favour? He should never
+have permitted me to abuse them. Or the grace he bestowed should have
+been efficacious and have directed my steps according to his liking.
+"But, say you, he makes man free." Alas? why did he present him with a
+gift of which he must have foreseen the abuse? Is this faculty of free
+agency, which enables me to resist his power, to corrupt and rob him of
+his worshippers, and in fine to bring eternal misery on myself, a
+present worthy of his infinite goodness? In consequence of the
+pretended abuse of this fatal present, which an omniscient and good God
+ought not to have bestowed on Beings capable of abusing it,
+everlasting, inexpressible torments are reserved for the transitory
+crimes of a Being made liable to commit them. Would that father be
+called good, reasonable, just and kind, who put a sharp-edged and
+dangerous knife into the hand of a playful, and imprudent child, whom
+he before knew to be imprudent, and punished him during the remainder
+of his life for cutting himself with it? Would that prince be called
+just and merciful, who, not regarding any proportion between the
+offence and the punishment, should perpetually exercise his power of
+vengeance, over one of his subjects who, being drunk, had rashly
+offended against his vanity, without causing any real harm to him,
+especially, when the prince had taken pains to make him drunk? Should
+we consider as almighty a monarch, whose dominions were in such
+confusion and disorder, that, except a small number obedient servants,
+all his subjects were every instant despising his laws, defeating his
+will and insulting his person? Let ecclesiastics then acknowledge, that
+their God is an assemblage of incompatible qualities, as
+incomprehensible to their understanding as to mine. No: they say, in
+reply to these difficulties, that wisdom and justice in God, are
+qualities so much above or so unlike those qualities in us, that they
+bear no relation or affinity towards human wisdom and justice. But,
+pray how am I to form to myself an idea of the divine perfection,
+unless it has some resemblance to those virtues which I observe in my
+fellow creatures and feel in myself? If the justice of God is not the
+same with human justice, why lastly do any men pretend to announce it,
+comprehend and explain it to others?"
+
+
+
+
+
+
+POSTSCRIPT.
+
+
+Previous to this publication the editor sent the following Letter
+to Dr. Priestley.
+
+
+"Reverend Sir,
+
+Had you thought it impossible for man to hold different sentiments
+respecting Natural religion and the proof of the existence of a God
+than you do, the Letters to a Philosophical Unbeliever would not have
+appeared, much less would you have invited an answer by promising a
+reply to every objection. Differing from you in sentiment I am the man
+who enter with you in the lists; but I find myself upon consultation
+with my friends under more difficulties than you were, and more to
+stand in need of courage in taking up the glove, than you needed to
+have in throwing it down. For this dispute is not like others in
+philosophy, where the vanquished can only dread ridicule, contempt and
+disappointment; here, whether victor or vanquished, your opponent has
+to dread, beside ecclesiastical censure, the scourges, chains and
+pillories of the courts of Law.
+
+I accuse you not of laying a trap for an unguarded author, but I ask
+your friendly opinion, whether I can, with temporal safety at least,
+maintain the contrary of your arguments in proof of a Deity and his
+attributes. If I cannot, no wonder the Theist cries _Victoria!_ but
+then it is a little ungenerous to ask for objections. Of you, I may
+certainly expect, that you will promise to use your influence, as well
+with lawyers as ecclesiastics, not to stir up a persecution against a
+poor atheist in case there should be one found in the kingdom, which
+people in general will not admit to be possible; or, if a persecution
+could ensue, that you and your friends, favourers of free enquiry,
+will at least bear the expences of it.
+
+     I am,
+     Reverend Sir,
+     Your most humble obedient servant,
+     WILLIAM HAMMON.
+
+Oct. 23. 1781.
+
+_To the Reverend Dr. Priestley._
+
+
+To this letter Dr. Priestley sent no answer; or no answer ever came
+to hand.
+
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Answer to Dr. Priestley's Letters to a
+Philosophical Unbeliever, by Matthew Turner
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 14120 ***
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Answer to Dr. Priestley's Letters to a
+Philosophical Unbeliever, by Matthew Turner
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Answer to Dr. Priestley's Letters to a Philosophical Unbeliever
+
+Author: Matthew Turner
+
+Release Date: November 22, 2004 [EBook #14120]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ANSWER TO DR. PRIESTLEY ***
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Attributed to Matthew Turner (d. 1788?) and William Hammon.
+
+Transcribed by the Freethought Archives
+
+NOTE: Irregularities in orthography and punctuation have been
+reproduced without emendation from the first edition of 1782.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+ANSWER TO DR. PRIESTLEY'S LETTERS TO A PHILOSOPHICAL UNBELIEVER.
+
+PART I.
+
+
+
+LONDON.
+MDCCLXXXII
+
+
+
+
+
+ADVERTISEMENT.
+
+
+The Editor of this publication has more in object to answer Dr. Priestley
+than to deliver his own sentiments upon Natural Religion, which however
+he has no inclination to disguise: but he does not mean to be answerable
+for them farther, than as by reason and nature he is at present
+instructed. The question here handled is not so much, whether a
+Deity and his attributed excellences exist, as whether there is any
+Natural or Moral proof of his existence and of those attributes.
+Revealed knowledge is not descanted upon; therefore Christians at least
+need take no offence. Doubts upon Natural Religion have not hitherto
+been looked upon as attacks upon Revelation, but rather as corroborations
+of it. What the Editor believes as a Christian (if he is one is
+therefore another affair, nor does he reckon himself so infallible or
+incapable of alteration in his sentiments, as not at another time to
+adopt different ones upon more reflexion and better information;
+therefore, though he has at present little or no doubt of what he
+asserts (taken upon the principles laid down) he shall hold himself
+totally freed from any necessity of defending the contents of this
+publication if brought into controversy; and as he has no desire of
+making converts, hopes he shall not himself be marked out as an object
+of persecution.
+
+Speculative points have always been esteemed fair matters for a free
+discussion. The religion established in this country is not the
+religion of Nature, but the religion of Moses and Jesus, with whom the
+writer has nothing to do. He trusts therefore he shall not be received
+as a malevolent disturber of such common opinions as are esteemed to
+keep in order a set of low wretches so inclinable to be lawless. At
+least, if he attempts to substitute better foundations for morality,
+malevolence can be no just charge. Truth is his aim; and no professors
+of religion will allow their system to be false. Or if he should be
+thought too bold a speculator, such of the ecclesiastics as will be his
+opponents may rather laugh at him than fear him. They have a thousand
+ways of making their sentiments go down with the bulk of mankind, to
+one this poor writer has. They are an army ready marshalled for the
+support of their own thesis; they are in the habit of controversy;
+pulpits are open to them as well as the press; and while the present
+author will be looked upon as a miracle of hardiness for daring to put
+his name to what he publishes, they can without fear or imputation lift
+up their heads; and should they even be known to transgress the bounds
+of good sense or politeness, they will only be esteemed as more zealous
+labourers in their own vocation.
+
+
+
+
+
+PREFATORY ADDRESS.
+
+
+Dr. Priestley,
+
+Your Letters addressed to a Philosophical Unbeliever I perused, not
+because I was a Philosopher or an Unbeliever; it were presumption to
+give myself the former title, and at that time I certainly did not
+deserve the latter; but as I was acquainted with another, who in
+reality, as far as I and others who know him can judge, deserves the
+title of a Philosopher and is neither ashamed nor afraid of that of an
+Unbeliever, I conceived them apt to be sent to my friend, and when I
+presented them to him, he said he was the person whom he should suppose
+you meant to address, if you had a particular person in view; but he
+had too much understanding of the world, though much abstracted from
+the dregs of it, not to conceive it more probable that you meant your
+Letters to be perused by thinking men in general, Believers and
+Unbelievers, to confirm the former in their creed, and to convert the
+latter from their error. You shall speedily know the effect they have
+had in both ways. For myself I must inform you that I was brought up a
+Believer from my infancy; a Theist, if a Christian is such; for I
+suppose the word will be allowed, though the equivalent term of Deist
+is so generally reprobated by Christians; I had before my eyes the
+example of a most amiable parent; a moral man, a Christian undoubtedly;
+who, when I have been attending upon him, as much from affection as
+from duty upon a sick and nearly dying bed, has prayed I might be
+stedfast in the faith he held, in accents still sounding in my
+intellectual ear; a parent, whom for his virtues and love of his
+offspring, like a Chinese, I am tempted to worship, and I could exclaim
+with the first of poets,
+
+          _"Erit ille mihi semper Deus."_
+
+With such habits of education then, such fervent advice and such
+reverence for my instructor, what can have turned me from my belief;
+for I confess I am turned? Immorallity it is not; that I assert has not
+preceded my unbelief, and I trust never will follow it; there has not
+indeed yet been time for it to follow; whether it is a probable
+consequence will presently be discussed; but it is _thought_, free
+thought upon the subject; when I began freely to think I proceeded
+boldly to doubt; your Letters gave me the cause for thinking, and my
+scepticism was exchanged for conviction; not entirely by the perusal of
+your Letters; for I do not think they would quite have made me an
+Atheist! but by attention to that answer from my friend, which I have
+his permission to subjoin.
+
+In mentioning that doubts arose by reading your very Letters, which
+were written to eradicate all doubts, let me not accuse you of being
+unequal to the task assumed. I mean no such charge. You have in my
+opinion been fully equal to the discussion, and have bandied the
+argument ably, pleasingly and politely. I am certain from the extracts
+you have made from Dr. Clarke, the first of other Divines, I should
+have been converted from my superstition by his reasoning, even without
+perusal of an answer: I pay you however the compliment of having only
+brought me to doubt, and I find I am not the only person who have been
+led to disbelieve by reading books expressly written to confirm the
+Believer. Stackhouse's Comment upon the Bible, and Leland's View of
+Deistical Writers have perhaps made as many renegado's in this country
+as all the allurements of Mahometanism has in others. What can be said
+to this? They were both undoubtedly men of abilities, and meant well to
+the cause they had to support. All that I shall observe upon the matter
+is, that what cannot bear discussion cannot be true. Reasoning in other
+sciences is the way to arrive at truth: the learned for a while may
+differ, but argument at last finds its force, and the controversy
+usually ends in general conviction. Reasoning upon the science of
+divinity will equally have its weight, and all men of letters would
+long ago have got rid of all superstitious notions of a Deity, but that
+men of letters are frequently men of weak nerves; such as Dr. Johnson
+is well known to be, that great triumph to religionists; it requires
+courage as well as sense to break the shackles of a pious education;
+but if merely a resolve to reason upon their force can break them, what
+can we observe in conclusion but
+
+          _"Magnus est veritas et prevalebit."_
+
+That religion or belief of a Deity cannot bear the force of argument is
+well known by Divines in general, is manifest by their annexing an idea
+of reproach to the very term of arguing upon the subject. These arguers
+they call Free-thinkers, and this appellation has obtained, in the
+understanding of pious believers, the most odious disgrace. Yet we
+cannot argue without thinking; nor can we either think or argue to any
+purpose without freedom. Therefore free-thinking, so far from being a
+disgrace, is a virtue, a most commendable quality. How absurd, and how
+cruel it is in the professors of divinity, to address the understanding
+of men on the subject of their belief, and to upbraid those very men
+who shall exercise their understanding in attending to their arguments!
+No tyranny is greater than that of ecclesiastics. These chain down our
+very ideas, other tyrants only confine our limbs. They invite us to the
+argument, yet damn us to eternal punishment for the use of reason on
+the subject. They give to man an essence distinct from his corporeal
+appearance and this they call his soul, a very ray and particle of the
+Divine Being; the principal faculty of this soul they allow to be that
+of reasoning, and yet they call reason a dark lanthorn, an erroneous
+vapour, a false medium, and at last the very instrument of another
+fancied Being of their own to lead men into their own destruction.
+_"In the image of himself made he man."_ A favourite text with
+theologians; but surely they do not mean that this God Almighty of
+theirs has got a face and person like a man. No; that they exclaim
+against, and, when we push them for the resemblance, they confess
+it is in the use of reason; it is in the soul.
+
+I am aware that I am not here to mix questions of Christianity with the
+general question of a Divinity; subjects of a very distinct enquiry,
+and which in the Letters to a Philosophical Unbeliever are very
+carefully separated. The subject of revelation is indeed promised
+afterwards to be taken up, provided the argument in favour of Natural
+Religion meets with a good reception. How, Dr. Priestley, you can judge
+of that reception I am at a loss to know, otherwise than by the number
+of editions you publish. It is then in the sum total just as much as if
+you had said, "provided this book sells well I will write another." Yet
+it may be sold to many such readers as I have been, though you will
+hardly call such reception good. You that have wrote so much, to whom
+it is so easy to write more, who profess a belief of revelation, such a
+laborious enquirer, and so great a master of the art of reasoning,
+should rather have engaged at once to prove in a subsequent publication
+the truth of revealed religion in arguments, as candid and as fairly
+drawn as those you have used in proof of a Deity independent of
+revelation. Different as I am in qualifications from you, not very
+learned, far from industrious, unused to publish, I do now promise
+that when you shall have brought into light your intended letters in
+behalf of revelation I will answer them. I hope you will take it as an
+encouragement to write that you are sure you shall have an answer. I
+mean you should, and I am sure I shall think myself greatly honoured if
+you will descend so far as to reply to my present answer. I know you
+have been used in controversies to have the last word, and in this I
+shall not baulk your ambition; for notwithstanding any defect of my
+plea in favour of atheism I mean to join issue upon your replication,
+and by no means, according to the practice and language of the lawyers,
+to put in a rejoinder. Should your arguments be defectively answered by
+me, should your learning and your reasoning be more conspicuous than
+mine, I shall bear your triumph without repining.
+
+I declare I am rather pleased there are so few atheists than at all
+anxious to make more. I triumph in my superior light. I am like the Jew
+or the Bramin who equally think themselves privileged in their superior
+knowledge of the Deity. With me and with my friend the comparison holds
+by way of contrast, for we are so proud in our singularity of being
+atheists that we will hardly open our lips in company, when the
+question is started for fear of making converts, and so lessening our
+own enjoyment by a numerous division of our privilege with others. It
+has indeed often been disputed, whether there is or ever was such a
+character in the world as an atheist. That it should be disputed is to
+me no wonder. Every thing may be, and almost every thing has been
+disputed. There are few or none who will venture openly to acknowledge
+themselves to be atheists. I know none among my acquaintance, except
+that one friend, to whom as a Philosophical Unbeliever I presented your
+Letters, and to whose answer I only mean this address as an
+introduction. I shall therefore not enter here into the main argument
+of Deity or no Deity. My address is only preliminary to the subject;
+but I do not therefore think myself precluded from entering into some
+considerations that may be thought incidental to it. I mean such
+considerations as whether immorality, unhappiness or timidity
+necessarily do or naturally ought to ensue from a system of atheism.
+But as to the question whether there is such an existent Being as an
+atheist, to put that out of all manner of doubt, I do declare upon my
+honour that I am one. Be it therefore for the future remembered, that
+in London in the kingdom of England, in the year of our Lord one
+thousand seven hundred and eighty-one, a man has publickly declared
+himself an atheist. When my friend returned me your Letters, addressing
+me with a grave face he said, "I hope, if you have any doubts, these
+Letters will have as good effect upon you as they have had upon me."
+My countenance brightened up and I replied, "You are then, my friend,
+convinced ?" "Yes, he said, I am convinced; that is, I am most
+thoroughly convinced there is no such thing as a God." Behold then,
+if we are to be believed, two atheists instead of one.
+
+Another question has been raised "whether a society of atheists can
+exist?" In other words "whether honesty sufficient for the purposes
+of civil society can be insured by other motives than the belief of
+a Deity?" Bayle has handled that question well. [Footnote: _Pensees
+sur la Comete_.] Few who know how to reason (and it is in vain to speak
+or think of those who lay reason out of the case) can fail to be convinced
+by the arguments of Bayle. I shall discuss the question no farther
+than as it is necessarily included in the discussion of some of those
+supposed results of atheism, such as I have before mentioned in the
+instances of immorality, unhappiness and timidity. In my argument
+upon this subject I shall carefully avoid all abuse and ridicule.
+Controversies are apt to be acrimonious. You, Sir, have certainly shewn
+instances to the contrary. You have charity beyond your fellows in the
+ecclesiastical line, and your answerers seem not to me to have a right
+in fair argument to step out of the limits you have prescribed
+yourself. To dispute with you is a pleasure equal almost to that of
+agreeing with another person. You have candour enough to allow it
+possible that an atheist may be a moral man. Where is that other
+ecclesiastic who will allow the same? Your answerers ought also to
+hold themselves precluded from using ridicule in handling this subject.
+I am no great supporter of Lord Shaftesbury's doctrine that ridicule
+is the test of truth. I own truth can never be ridiculous, that is,
+it can never be worthy of laughter, but still it may be laughed at.
+To use the other term, I may say, truth can never be worthy of ridicule,
+but still it may be ridiculed. Just ridicule is a sufficient test
+of truth; but after all we should be driven to an inquiry, upon
+the principles of reasoning, whether the ridicule were just or not.
+Boldness, which is not incompatible with decency and candour, I do
+hold to be an absolute requisite in all speech and argument, where
+truth is the object of inquiry. Therefore when I am asked, whether
+there is a God or no God, I do not mince the matter, but I boldly
+answer there is none, and give my reason for my disbelief; for I
+adopt my friend's answer by the publication of it.
+
+That mischief may ensue to society by such freedom of discussion is
+also another argument for me to consider; I do not say to combat, for
+though I were convinced or could not resist the argument that mischief
+would ensue to society by such a discussion, yet I should think myself
+intitled to enter into it. I have a right to truth, and to publish
+truth, let society suffer or not suffer by it. That society which
+suffers by truth should be otherwise constituted; and as I cannot well
+think that truth will hurt any society rightly constituted, so I should
+rather be inclined to doubt the force of the argument in case atheism
+being found to be truth should apparently be proved prejudicial to such
+a society.
+
+I come unprejudiced to the question, and when I have promised you an
+answer to your future Letters in support of revelation, I have neither
+anticipated your argument nor prejudged the cause. I hold myself open
+to be convinced, and if I am convinced I shall say so, which is equally
+answering as if I denied the force of your observations. In that sense
+only I promise an answer. If I believe I shall say, I do; but I shall
+not believe and tremble, confident as I am, that if I act an honest
+part in life, whether there be a Deity and a future existence or not,
+whatever reason I may have to rejoice in case such ideas he realised, I
+can upon such an issue have none to tremble. I look upon myself to have
+more reason to be temporally afraid than eternally so. Dr. Priestley or
+any other Doctor can put his name boldly to a book in favour of Theism,
+loudly call the supporters of a contrary doctrine to the argument, and
+if no answer is produced, assert their own reasoning to be unanswerable.
+In that sense their sort of reasoning has been frequently unanswerable.
+Here however is an instance of a poor unknown individual, making
+experience of the candour of the ecclesiastics and the equity of
+the laws of England, for he ventures to subscribe his publication with
+his name as well as Dr. Priestley does his Letters, to which this
+publication is an answer. Perhaps he may have cause to repent of his
+hardiness, but if he has, he is equally resolved to glory in his
+martyrdom, as to suffer it. Whatever advantage religion has had in the
+enumeration of it's martyrs, the cause of atheism may boast the same.
+As to the instances of the professors of any particular form of
+religion, or modification of that form, such as Christians or sects of
+Christians, suffering martyrdom for their belief, I shall no more allow
+them to be martyrs for theism than Pagans similarly suffering for their
+belief, shall I call martyrs for atheism. Theism very likely has had
+it's martyrs. I can instance one I think in Socrates, and I shall
+mention Vanini as a martyr for atheism. The conduct of those two great
+men in their last moments may be worth attending to. The variety of
+other poor heretical wretches, who have been immolated at the shrine of
+absurdity for all the possible errors of human credence, let them have
+their legendary fame. I put them out of the scale in this important
+inquiry.
+
+Not that I really think the argument to be much advanced by naming the
+great supporters of one opinion or of another. In mathematics,
+mechanics, natural philosophy, in literature, taste, and politics the
+sentiments of great men of great genius are certainly of weight. There
+are some subjects capable of demonstration, many indeed which the
+ingenuity of one man can go farther to illustrate than that of another.
+The force of high authority is greater in the three former sciences
+than in the latter. Theism and Atheism I hold to be neither of them
+strictly demonstrable. You, Dr. Priestley, agree with me in that. Still
+I hold the question capable of being illustrated by argument, and I
+should hold the authority of great men's names to be of more weight in
+this subject, were I not necessarily forced to consider that all
+education is strongly calculated to support the idea of a Deity; by
+this education prejudice is introduced, and prejudice is nothing else
+than a corruption of the understanding. Certain principles, call them,
+if you please, data, must be agreed upon before any reasoning can take
+place. Disputants must at least agree in the ideas which they annex to
+the language they use. But when prejudice has made a stand,
+argumentation is set at so wide a distance, through a want of fixt data
+to proceed upon, that attention is in vain applied to the dispute.
+Besides, the nature of the subject upon which this prejudice takes
+place, is such, that the finest genius is nearly equally liable to an
+undue bias with the most vulgar. To question with boldness and
+indifference, whether an individual, all-forming, all-seeing and
+all-governing Being exists, to whom, if he exists, we may possibly be
+responsible for our actions, whose intelligence and power must be
+infinitely superior to our own, requires a great conquest of former
+habitude, a firmness of nerves, as well as of understanding; it will
+therefore be no great wonder, if such men as Locke and Newton can be
+named among the believers in a Deity. They were christians as well as
+theists, so that their authority goes as far in one respect as in the
+other. But if the opinions of men of great genius are to have weight,
+what is to be said of modern men of genius? You, Sir, are of opinion
+that the world is getting wiser as well as better. There is all the
+reason in the world it should get wiser at least, since wisdom is only
+a collection of experience, and there must be more experience as the
+world is older. Modern Philosophers are nearly all atheists. I take the
+term atheist here in the popular sense. Hume, Helvetius, Diderot,
+D'Alembert. Can they not weigh against Locke and Newton, and even more
+than Locke and Newton, since their store of knowledge and learning was
+at hand to be added to their own, and among them are those who singly
+possessed equal science in mathematics as in metaphysics? It is not
+impossible, perhaps not improbable, from his course of learning and
+inquiries, that if Dr. Priestley had not from his first initiation into
+science been dedicated for what is called the immediate service of God,
+he himself might have been one of the greatest disprovers of his
+pretended divinity.
+
+In England you think, Sir, that atheism is not prevalent among men of
+free reasoning, though you acknowledge it to be much so in other
+countries. It is not the first time it has been observed that the
+greater the superstition of the common people the less is that of men
+of letters. In the heart of the Papal territories perhaps is the
+greatest number of atheists, and in the reformed countries the greatest
+number of deists. Yet it is a common observation, especially by
+divines, that deism leads to atheism, and I believe the observation is
+well founded. I hardly need explain here, that by deism in this sense
+is meant a belief in the existence of a Deity from natural and
+philosophical principles, and a disbelief in all immediate revelation
+by the Deity of his own existence. Such is the force of habit, that it
+is by degrees only, that even men of sense and firmness shake off one
+prejudice after another. They begin by getting rid of the absurdities
+of all popular religions. This leaves them simple deists, but the force
+of reasoning next carries them a step farther, and whoever trusts to
+this reasoning, devoid of all fear and prejudice, is very likely to end
+at last in being an atheist. Nor do I admit it to be an argument either
+for Revelation or Natural Religion, that the same turn for speculation
+that would convert a christian into a theist, will carry him on to be
+an atheist, though I know the argument has been often used. If upon
+sick beds or in dying moments men revert to their old weakness and
+superstitions, their falling off may afford triumph to religionists;
+for my part I care not so much for the opinions of sick and dying men,
+as of those who at the time are strong and healthy. But in the opinion
+of the one or the other I put no great stress. My faith is in
+reasoning, for though ridicule is not a complete test of truth,
+reasoning I hold certainly to be so. I own belief may be imprest on the
+mind otherwise than by the force of reason. The mind may be diseased.
+All I shall say is that though I have formerly believed many things
+without reason, and even many against it, as is very common, I hope I
+shall never more. My mind (I was going to say, thank God) is sane at
+present, and I intend to keep it so. I am aware that at the expression
+just used some will exclaim in triumph, that the poor wretch could not
+help thinking of his God at the same time he was denying him. The
+observation would hold good, if it were not that we often speak and
+write unpremeditately and though what is in this manner unpremeditately
+expressed upon a revision should be certainly expunged, yet I chuse to
+leave the expression to shew the force of habit.
+
+In fear lies the origin of all fancied deities, whether sole or
+numberless.
+
+          _Primus in orbe Deos fecit Timor._
+
+But the great debasement of the human mind is evidenced in the instance
+of attributing a merit to belief, which has come at last to be stiled a
+virtue, and is dignified by the name of faith, that most pitiful of all
+human qualities. When the apostle spoke of faith, hope and charity, he
+might as well have exclaimed the least of the three is faith, as the
+greatest is charity.
+
+One enthusiast cries out _un Roi_ and another _un Dieu_. The reality of
+the king I admit, because I feel his power. Against my feeling and my
+experience I cannot argue, for upon these sensations is built all
+argument. But not all the wondrous works of the creation, as I hear the
+visible operations of nature called, convince me in the least of the
+existence of a Deity. By nature I mean to express the whole of what I
+see and feel, that whole, I call self-existent from all eternity; I
+admit a principle of intelligence and design, but I deny that principle
+to be extraneous from itself. My creed in fine is the same with that of
+the Roman poet;
+
+          _"Deus est ubicunque movemur."_
+
+If then I am admitted to explain my deity in this sense, I am not an
+atheist, nor can any one else in the world be such. The _vis naturae_,
+the perpetual industry, intelligence and provision of nature must be
+apparent to all who see, feel or think. I mean to distinguish this
+active, intelligent and designing principle, inherent as much in matter
+as the properties of gravity or any elastic, attractive or repulsive
+power, from any extraneous foreign force and design in an invisible
+agent, supreme though hidden lord and maker over all effects and
+appearances that present themselves to us in the course of nature. The
+last supposition makes the universe and all other organised matter a
+machine made or contrived by the arbitrary will of another Being, which
+other Being is called God; and my theory makes a God of this universe,
+or admits no other God or designing principle than matter itself and
+its various organisations.
+
+The inquiry is said to be important. But why is it so! All truth is
+important. It is a question of little importance, merely whether a man
+had a maker or no, although it is of great importance to disprove the
+existence of such a Deity as theologians wish to establish, because
+appearances in the world go against it. Supposing however that it was
+granted, that the question, whether there is a Deity or not, was as
+little important as other truths, yet the question becomes important
+with this reflexion, that other events may follow as deductions; such
+as a particular providence, or a future state of rewards and
+punishments; but whether such deductions or either of them necessarily
+follow may well be queried. As to a particular providence you give up
+the reality of it, and I give it up too. But I cannot give up the
+argument, that if there were a God with all his allowed attributes of
+wisdom, power and justice, there ought to be a particular providence to
+counteract the general laws of nature, in favour of those who defend
+the interposition. Though the Deity should not interfere unless there
+be a worthy cause, agreeable to the Horation rule,
+
+          _"Nec Deus interfuit nisi vindice nodus;"_
+
+Yet surely from the same principles it should follow that the Deity
+ought to interfere where there is a worthy cause. Here however arises
+another dilemma, for if the Deity has really those attributes of power
+and justice, there would never have been occasion for such temperaneous
+interpositions. A particular providence must indeed prove one of these
+two principles, either that God was imperfect in his design, or that
+inert matter is inimical to the properties of God. If that wished for
+interposition of the Deity is put off to a future existence, I cannot
+help observing, that future day has been already a long while waited
+for in vain, and any delay destroys some one attribute or other of the
+Deity. He wants justice, or he wants the power, or the will to do good
+and be just. That a future state of rewards and punishments may however
+exist without a Deity, you, Dr. Priestley, allow to be no impossibility.
+It may indeed be argued with apparent justness, that a principle of
+reviviscence may as well be admitted as a principle of production in
+the first instance: and as to rewards and punishments, judgement may be
+rendered, as well as now, by Beings less than Deities. For my part I
+firmly wish for such a future state, and though I cannot firmly believe
+it, I am resolved to live as if such a state were to ensue. This seems,
+I own, like doubting, and doubting may be said to be a miserable state
+of anxiety. "Better be confident than unhinged; better confide in
+ignorance than have no fixed system." So it may be argued; but I think
+the result will be as people feel. Those who do not feel bold enough,
+to be satisfied with their own thoughts, may abandon them and adopt the
+thoughts of others. For my part I am content with my own; and not the
+less so because they do not end in certainty upon matters, from the
+nature of them, beyond the complete reach of human intelligence.
+
+There is nothing in fact important to human nature but happiness, which
+is or ought to be the end or aim of our being. I mean self-happiness;
+but fortunately for mankind, such is by nature our construction, that
+we cannot individually be happy unless we join also in promoting the
+happiness of others. Should immorality, timidity or other base
+principles arise from atheism it tends immediately, I will own, to the
+unhappiness of mankind. If it is asked me, "why am I honest and
+honourable?" I answer, because of the satisfaction I have in being so.
+"Do all people receive that satisfaction?" No, many who are ill
+educated, ill-exampled and perverted, do not. I do, that is enough for
+me. In short, I am well constructed, and I feel I can therefore act an
+honest and honourable part without any religious motive. Did I
+perceive, that belief in a Deity produced morality or inspired courage,
+I might be prompted to confess, that the contrary would ensue from
+atheism. But the bulk of the world has long believed, or long pretended
+to believe in a Deity, yet morality and every commendable quality seem
+at a stand. The believer and the unbeliever we often see equally base,
+equally immoral. Superstition is certainly only the excess of religion.
+That evidently is attended often with immorality and cowardice. I am
+tempted to say, from observation, that the belief of a Deity is apt to
+drive mankind into vice and baseness; but I check myself in the
+assertion, upon considering that very few indeed are those who really
+believe in a Deity out of such as pretend to do so. It is impossible
+for an intellectual being to believe firmly in that of which he can
+give no account, or of which he can form no conception. I hold the
+Deity, the fancied Deity, at least, of whom with all his attributes
+such pompous descriptions are set forth to the great terror of old
+women and the amusement of young children, to be an object of which we
+form (as appears when we scrutinise into our ideas) no conception and
+therefore can give no account. It is said, after all this, that men do
+still believe in such a Deity, I then do say in return, they do not
+make use of their intellects. The moment we go into a belief beyond
+what we feel, see and understand, we might as well believe in
+will-with-a-whisp as in God. But I would fix morality upon a better
+basis than belief in a Deity. If it has indeed at present no other
+basis, it is not morality, it is selfishness, it is timidity; it is the
+hope of reward, it is the dread of punishment. For a great and good
+man, shew me one who loves virtue because he finds a pleasure in it,
+who has acquired a taste for that pleasure by considering what and
+where happiness is, who is not such a fool as to seek misery in
+preference to happiness, whose honour is his Deity, whose conscience
+is his judge. Put such a man in combat against the superstitious son
+of Spain or Portugal, it were easy to say who would shew the truest
+courage. The question might be more voluminously discussed, but I feel
+already proof of conviction; if you, Dr. Priestley, do not, perhaps
+some other readers may. I have nothing to do with men of low minds.
+They will always have their religion or pretence of it, but I am
+mistaken if it is not the gallows or the pillory that more govern
+their morals than the gospel or the pulpit.
+
+After all, atheism may be a system only for the learned. The ignorant of
+all ages have believed in God. The answer of a Philosophical Unbeliever
+though written in the vulgar tongue may probably not reach the vulgar.
+If argument had prevailed they were long converted from their
+superstitious belief. The sentiments of atheistical philosophers have
+long been published. If mischief therefore could ensue to society from
+such free discussions, that mischief society must long have felt. I
+think truth should never be hid, but few are those who mind it. I will
+therefore take upon myself but little importance though I have presumed
+to preface an answer from a Philosophical Unbeliever to Letters which
+you, Dr. Priestley have written. If you deem that answer detrimental to
+the interests of society, you will recollect that you invite the
+proposal of objections and promise to answer all as well as you can. If
+you should happen to be exasperated by the freedom of the language or
+the contrariety of the sentiment, this answer will gain weight in
+proportion as you lose in the credit of a tolerant Divine. Therefore if
+you reply at all, reply with candour and with coolness; heed the matter
+and not the man, though I subscribe my name, and am
+
+     Reverend Sir,
+     Your friend, admirer, and humble servant,
+     WILLIAM HAMMON.
+
+_Oxford-Street, No._ 418.
+_Jan._ 1, 1782.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+               ANSWER FROM A PHILOSOPHICAL UNBELIEVER.
+
+
+It is the general fashion to believe in a God, the maker of all things,
+or at least to pretend to such a belief, to define the nature of this
+existing Deity by the attributes which are given to him, to place the
+foundation of morality on this belief, and in idea at least, to connect
+the welfare of civil society with the acknowledgement of such a Being.
+Few however are those, who being questioned can give any tolerable
+grounds for their assertions upon this subject, and hardly any two
+among the learned agree in their manner of proving what each will
+separately hold to be indisputably clear. The attributes of a Deity are
+more generally agreed upon, though less the subject of proof, than his
+existence. As to morality, those very people who are moral will not
+deny, they would be so though there were not a God, and there never yet
+has been a civil lawgiver, who left crimes to be punished by the author
+of the universe; not even the profanation of oaths upon the sacredness
+of which so much is built in society, and which yet is said to be a
+more immediate offence against the Deity than any other that can be
+named.
+
+The method which Dr. Priestley has taken to prove the existence of
+a God, is by arguing from _effect_ to _cause_. He explodes that other
+pretended proof _a priori_ which has so much raised the fame of
+Dr. Clarke among other theologians. As to the attributes of the Deity,
+Dr. Priestley is not quite so confident in his proofs there; and the
+most amiable one, the most by mortals to be wished for, the _benevolence_
+of God he almost gives up, or owns at least there is not so much proof
+of it as of his other attributes. His observations are divided into
+several Letters, this is one answer given to the whole; for it would be
+to no purpose to reply to topics upon which the writers are agreed.
+What therefore is not contradicted here, Dr. Priestley may in general
+take to be allowed; but to obviate doubts and to allow his argument
+every force, it may be fairer perhaps to recite at full length what in
+this answer is allowed to be true, what is denied as false, what meant
+to be exposed as absurd, and what rejected as assertions without proof,
+inadmissible or inconclusive. The conclusion will contain some
+observations upon the whole.
+
+
+    TRUISMS.
+
+    1. "Effects have their adequate causes."
+
+    2. "Nothing begins to exist without a cause foreign to itself."
+
+    3. "No being could make himself, for that would imply that he
+    existed and did not exist at the same time."
+
+    4. If one horse, or one tree, had a cause, all had."
+
+    5. Something must have existed from all eternity.
+
+    6. "Atoms cannot be arranged, in a manner expressive of the most
+    exquisite design, without competent intelligence having existed
+    somewhere."
+
+    7. "The idea of a supreme author is more pleasing to a virtuous
+    mind, than that of a blind fate and fatherless deserted world."
+
+    8. "The condition of mankind is in a state of melioration, as far as
+    misery arises from ignorance, for as the world grows older it must
+    grow wiser, if wisdom arises from experience."
+
+    9. "All moral virtue is only a modification of benevolence."
+
+    10. "Virtue gives a better chance for happiness than vice."
+
+    11. "No instance of any revival."
+
+    12. "Atheists are not to think themselves quite secure with respect
+    to a future life."
+
+    13. "Thought might as well depend upon the construction of the
+    brain, as upon any invisible substance extraneous to the brain."
+
+    14. "If the works of God had a beginning, there must have been a
+    time when he was inactive."
+
+    15. "Where happiness is wanting in the creation I would rather
+    conclude the author had mist of his design than that he wanted
+    benevolence."
+
+
+    FALSE ASSERTIONS.
+
+    1. "A cause needs not be prior to an effect."
+
+    2. "If the species of man had no beginning, it would not follow that
+    it had no cause."
+
+    3. "A cause may be cotemporary with the effect."
+
+    4. "An atheist must believe he was introduced into the world without
+    design."
+
+
+    ABSURDITIES.
+
+    1. "A general mass of sensation consisting of various elements
+    borrowed from the past and the future."
+
+    2. "Since sensation is made up of past, present, and future, the
+    infant feeling for the moment only, the man recollecting what is
+    past and anticipating the future, and as the present sensation must
+    therefore in time bear a less proportion to the general mass of
+    sensation than it did, so at last all temporary affections, whether
+    of pain or pleasure become wholly inconsiderable."
+
+    3. "The great book of nature and the book of revelation both lie
+    open before us."
+
+    4. "A conclusion above our comprehension."
+
+    5. "A whole eternity already past."
+
+    6. "Since a finite Being cannot be infinitely happy, because he must
+    then be infinite in knowledge and power; and as all limitation of
+    happiness must consist in degree of happiness or mixture of misery,
+    the Deity can alone determine which mode of limitation is best."
+
+    7. "We have reason to be thankful for our pains and distress."
+
+    8. "If the divine Being had made man at first as happy as he can be
+    after all the feelings and ideas of a painful and laborious life, it
+    must have been in violation of all general laws and by a constant
+    and momentary interference of the Deity."
+
+    9. "It is better the divine agency should not be very conspicuous."
+
+    10. "If good prevails on the whole, creation being infinite,
+    happiness must be infinite, and God comprehending the whole, will
+    only perceive the balance of good, and that will be happiness
+    unmixed with misery."
+
+    11. "If a man is happy in the whole he is infinitely happy in the
+    whole of his existence."
+
+    12. "Although all things fall alike to all men and no distinction is
+    made between the righteous and the wicked, and even though the
+    wicked derive an advantage from their vices, yet this is consistent
+    with a state of moral government by a Being of infinite wisdom and
+    power."
+
+    13. "As ploughing is the means of having a harvest, though God has
+    predetermined whether there should be a harvest or not, so prayer is
+    the means of obtaining good from God, although that good is
+    predetermined upon; it is therefore no more absurd to pray than to
+    plough."
+
+    14. "Notwithstanding happiness is the necessary consequence of
+    health, yet man's happiness is more from intellectual than corporeal
+    feelings."
+
+    15. "Evil is necessarily connected with and subservient to good,
+    although in the next world there will be all good and no evil."
+
+    16. "By reason we can discover the necessary existence of a Deity,
+    yet to be a sceptic on that subject is the first step to be a
+    Christian, because reason not sufficiently proving it we fly to
+    revealed truth."
+
+    17. "The power, which a man has by the comprehensiveness of his mind
+    to enjoy the future, has no apparent limits."
+
+    18. "It is of no avail in the argument concerning the existence of a
+    Deity, that we have no conception of him, since it does not imply
+    impossibility of his existence that we have no idea at all upon the
+    subject."
+
+
+    INADMISSIBLE OR INCONCLUSIVE.
+
+    1. "The question of the existence of a Deity is important."
+
+    2. "A Theist has a higher sense of personal dignity than an
+    atheist."
+
+    3. "The conduct of an atheist must give concern to those who are not
+    so."
+
+    4. "An atheist believes himself to be, at his death, for ever
+    excluded from returning life."
+
+    5. "There are more atheists than unbelievers in revelation."
+
+    6. "Men of letters may have the same bias to incredulity as others
+    to credulity, because they are subject to a wrong association of
+    ideas, as well as other persons though in a less degree."
+
+    7. "Whoever first made a thing, for example a chair or a table, must
+    have had an adequate idea of it's nature and use."
+
+    8. "If a table had a designing cause, the tree from whence the wood
+    came, and the man who made the table must have had a designing
+    cause, which comprehended all the powers and properties of trees and
+    men."
+
+    9. "All the visible universe, as far as we can judge, bears the
+    marks of being one work, and therefore must have had a cause of
+    infinite power and intelligence."
+
+    10. "We might as well say a table had no cause, as that the world
+    had none."
+
+    11. "A Being originally and necessarily capable of comprehending
+    itself, it is not improper to call infinite, for we can have no idea
+    of any bounds to it's knowledge or power."
+
+    12. "A series of finite causes cannot possibly be carried back
+    _ad infinitum_."
+
+    13. "Our imagination revolts at the idea of an intellectual soul of
+    the universe, that is, of an intelligence resulting from
+    arrangement."
+
+    14. "The actual existence of the universe compels us to come at last
+    to an _originally existent and intellectual Being_, because if the
+    immediate maker of the universe has not existed from all eternity,
+    he must have derived his being and senses from one who has, and that
+    being we call God."
+
+    15. "God must be present to all his works, if we admit no power can
+    act but where it is, he must therefore exist every where, because
+    his works are every where."
+
+    16. "As no being can unmake or materially change himself (at least
+    none can annihilate himself) so God is unchangeable, for no Being
+    God made can change him and no other Being can exist but what God
+    made."
+
+    17. "Two infinite intelligent beings of the same kind would
+    coincide, therefore there can only be one God."
+
+    18. "Nothing can be more evident, than that plants and animals could
+    not have proceeded from each other from all eternity."
+
+    19. "That happiness is the design of the creation because health is
+    designed and sickness is only an exception, not a general rule is as
+    evident as that the design of the Mill-wright must have been, that
+    his machine should not be obstructed."
+
+    20. "As a state of sickness is comparatively rare with a state of
+    health, happiness the result of health, and the end of the creation
+    happiness, so the end of the creation is already in a great measure
+    answered."
+
+    21. "Pleasure tends to continue and propagate itself, pain to check
+    and exterminate itself."
+
+    22. "As our knowledge and power in respect to shunning pains and
+    procuring pleasures advance with our experience, nothing is wanting
+    to enable us to exterminate all pains, but a continuance of being.
+
+    23. "Our enjoyments continually increase in real value from infancy
+    to old age."
+
+    24. "A future moral distribution is probable, because God is
+    infinitely powerful and wise."
+
+    25. "Since reverence, gratitude, obedience, confidence are duties to
+    men, so they are to God; and as we pray to men, so we should pray to
+    God."
+
+    26. "Prescience, predetermination and infinite benevolence are no
+    argument against prayer to the Deity."
+
+    27. "A wish produced by nature is evidence of the thing wished for,
+    but a future state is wished for, therefore there is evidence of a
+    future state."
+
+    28. "As we have no idea how we came originally to be produced, 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 which is a cause, at least what is an effect to-day
+may be a cause to-morrow, as in the instance of generation; for though
+a son does not beget his father, he too has his offspring in which he
+may be said to live over again, and if we are to argue only from
+experience, most probably that alone is the resurrection and the life
+to come. But if it is contended that our experience relates only to
+finite causes, or causes incapable of comprehending themselves, it must
+at the same time be allowed, that all our reasoning is founded only on
+experience. This Dr. P. at least allows even while he keeps reasoning
+about a Deity, which he calls an infinite cause capable of comprehending
+itself, though nobody is capable of comprehending it, and of which we
+therefore can have no experience. Yet he will assert, that _thinking_
+persons seldom are convinced by _thinking_. This is odd language for a
+reasoner. When another philosopher or divine attempts to prove a God in
+their own way, Dr. Priestley can readily see his fallacies and
+absurdities. Dr. Clarke, the former great champion of God Almighty, is
+made very light of. He thought, foolish man, to prove the existence of
+a Deity merely by our having an idea of that existence, which would go
+to prove the truth of every unnatural conceit that ever entered into
+the heart of man; and contended farther that it would be equally absurd
+to suppose no Deity as two and two did not make four. It would indeed
+be absurd, says Dr. Priestley provided we agreed that the universe is a
+_caused_ existence, for God is the name we give for the cause of the
+universe, which in such case must exist. It is only denying that the
+universe is a caused existence, and then the absurdity is taken away.
+Dr. Priestley, for the sake of making Dr. Clarke absurd, will readily
+allow the denial capable of being made; and for the same purpose he
+seems gravely to have taken upon himself to prove that school-boy's
+difficulty, that two and two do make four, for he says, that four is
+the term agreed upon in language to be given to the sum total of two
+and two, and that to deny the Deity is at least not so absurd as to say
+that two and two do not make four.
+
+Dr. Priestley says he finds no difficulty in excluding every thing from
+the mind except space and duration. He allows then at least, that there
+is no manifest absurdity in supposing there is no Deity, for nothing
+can be proved by reasoning if the conclusion can be denied without
+absurdity, nor can there be a manifest absurdity in denying the
+existence of what there is no difficulty in excluding from the mind.
+Yet after all he adds (somewhat inconsistently) that we cannot exclude
+the idea of a Deity, if we do not exclude an existent universe. This
+Deity he defines to be a most simple Being; simple and infinite; terms
+which but ill agree together.
+
+The infinite or boundless existence of this pretended Deity is a
+property more insisted upon than any other, and whatever other
+properties are given to him they are all in the infinite degree. The
+properties alledged to be proved are, eternity, infinite knowledge and
+power, unchangeableness, unity, omnipotence, action from all eternity,
+and independence. Benevolence and moral government are also ascribed to
+him but confessedly with a less degree of certainty, though the most
+desireable of all his given properties. Upon the subject of benevolence,
+Dr. Priestley only advances, that where it is not proved by the
+happiness of his creatures to exist, he would rather chuse to conclude
+he mist of his design, that is, he wanted power or knowledge, than that
+he wanted benevolence. If he means to argue that it is more rational to
+conclude this Deity wanted power and knowledge than that he wanted
+benevolence, and because Dr. Priestley fancies himself to have proved
+the Deity cannot want the two former, he concludes the Deity cannot
+want the latter, as the less probable for him to be deficient in, his
+argument is no more a truism. As a wish, that the Deity may not want
+benevolence, in that sense let him take it as agreed upon. He allows
+that misery in the human species proves malevolence in the Deity, and
+happiness the contrary. All the proof adduced in favour of benevolence
+is in asserting that throughout the universe, good is more predominant
+than evil. The infinite extent of benevolence he will allow incapable
+of proof; but then it is said that the evils which mankind endure are
+not so great as might be inflicted upon them; that virtue to vice,
+happiness to misery, health to sickness bear at least equal proportions.
+That lesser evils exist instead of greater is indeed but a poor proof
+in the favour of the benevolence of an all-powerful Being. Or grant,
+that good is more predominant than evil, this surely is no proof
+neither of the benevolence of a kind and all-powerful Being. Yet
+Dr. Priestley adds that the general benevolence of the Deity is
+unquestionable. How 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 the creation" because health
+is designed, and sickness is only an exception, not a general rule."
+Many a healthy man has certainly been unhappy, or else had a man better
+study health than virtue. If the mill-wright make a poor machine he is
+a poor workman; God in like manner designing health and introducing
+sickness is but a poor physician. In another place Dr. Priestley having
+considered, that he had asserted that human sensations arise from ideas
+of the past and future as well as the present, finds himself obliged to
+alter his notions of happiness, so far as to say that happiness is more
+intellectual than corporeal. But it is rather extraordinary to assert
+at the same time, that happiness is the necessary consequence of
+health, and that happiness is more from intellectual than corporeal
+feelings. Surely health, if any thing, is corporeal. Another curious
+fancy about pain and happiness is, that our finite nature not admitting
+infinite or unlimited happiness we must leave it to the wisdom of the
+Deity to determine which is best for us (since happiness must be
+diminished) a little pain to be added to it or somewhat of happiness to
+be taken away. It hardly requires the skill of a benevolent Deity to
+determine which is best for the creatures he has made (and whom he
+wishes to be as happy as their finite nature will admit) to lessen
+their degree of happiness or mix therein a proportion of misery. To
+conclude he asks, "how it is possible to teach children caution, but by
+feeling pain?" It is easy to allow in answer, that it might not perhaps
+be possible in us. But he is arguing about the benevolence of a Deity.
+It was possible, he will allow, in him to have given these children
+knowledge without pain, at least if he continues to him the attribute
+he allows of omnipotence.
+
+Next he observes that parents suspend at times their benefits to their
+offspring, when persuaded they are not for their good; so does the
+Deity. But before this argument holds he must therefore say, it is not
+for the good of man to be made happy now, and that the Deity can be
+infinitely benevolent without willing either infinite or universal
+happiness. Take the argument any way, it must go against his
+benevolence or his power; and the same observations hold as to his love
+of justice, whilst he is so tardy in punishing offenders.
+
+After observing that things are in an improving state, Dr. Priestley
+allows, that the moral government of the universe is not perfect. From
+thence he proceeds to assert, that atheists may believe it within the
+course of nature, that men as moral agents may after death be
+re-produced, and therefore that there may be a future state though
+there be no God, because he reasons it may be in the course of nature.
+This allows that the course of nature may be as it is without a God,
+and that there is therefore no _natural_ proof of a Deity. His farther
+argument on this head is, that "things usually happen in a state of
+nature that are proper. A future state is proper. (To carry on the
+supposed state of melioration and complete the moral government of the
+universe.) It is therefore probable." This is an argument perhaps more
+of wish than probability, but let it have such force as belongs to it.
+It is not the wish of the answerer by supporting atheism to give
+encouragement to immorality, but should he unwarily or with weak minds
+do so, the argument of the Deity's existence is independent of such
+considerations. It were better to seek another support for morality
+than a belief in God; for the moral purpose in believing a Deity (an
+invisible Being, maker of all, our moral governor, who will hereafter
+take cognizance of our conduct,) is not a little checked by
+considering, that he leaves the proof of his very existence so
+ambiguous, that even men with a habit of piety upon them cannot but
+have their doubts, whilst on this existence so much of the moral
+purpose depends. If this is not an argument against the morality of a
+Deity, it is at all events one against his _infinite_ morality though
+moral is an attribute to be given to him in the infinite degree as much
+as any other.
+
+It is said, infinite intelligence must have procured a necessary
+fitness of things, and that this forms morality. "His will could not be
+biassed by other influence; therefore he must have willed morality,
+because necessarily fit. Then comes infinite power, and yet no morality
+in the world or a very small portion of it. We cannot to any purpose,
+do what we will, argue against experience. That it must be, yet that it
+is not. What must be, will be. If it is not, there is no _must_ in the
+case.
+
+It is next said, that virtue gives a better chance for happiness than
+vice. This also is but a weak argument for the moral government of the
+universe, unless it be for a moral government by chance. Virtue ought
+to be the certain and immediate parent of happiness, if a moral
+governor existed with an 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_, but _sui generis_,
+merely applicable to the Deity.
+
+From the imperial infinite intelligence of the Deity an argument is
+formed of his unity. Dr. Priestley says, "that two _infinite_
+intelligent Beings would coincide, and therefore that there can only be
+one such Being." Two parallels will never coincide. That is one of the
+first axioms of Euclid, in whom Dr. Priestley believes as much as in
+his bible. If the Beings are infinite in extent and magnitude they must
+certainly coincide, but if they are only infinite in intelligence, it
+does not seem to be necessary that they should.
+
+The ubiquity of God is proved in this short way: "God made every thing,
+God controuls every thing. No power can act but where it is. Therefore
+God is present every where. The workman must certainly be present at
+his work, but when the work is done he may go about other business. If
+all the properties of matter, such as gravity, elasticity and other
+such existed only by the perpetual leave and agency of the Deity, it
+may be argued he is in all places where matter is. Space, empty space
+will still exist without him. In this mode of proof Dr. Priestley must,
+contrary to the Newtonian system argue for a _Plenum_, before he proves
+the ubiquity. He cannot exclude space from his mind, nor can he exclude
+gravity from matter. Yet can he admit matter as well as space to be
+eternal, because he will not allow the inactivity of God." "If God's
+works had a beginning he must have been _for a whole eternity_
+inactive." He seems to have an odd notion of eternity, for he there
+allows it could have an end. The argument would be fairer in concluding
+"he must have been inactive _or doing something else_."
+
+The Deity set up, if not the creator of matter, is at least the matter
+of it, nor will his advocates by any means allow him to be material
+himself. They see some incongruity in admitting one piece of matter to
+be so complete a master of another. However Dr. Priestley and other
+arguers for a Deity would do well to consider, that whatever is not
+matter, is a space that matter may occupy. Therefore if God is not
+matter, and also is not space, he is nothing. Dr. Priestley allows
+matter eternal, and its properties of gravity, elasticity, electricity
+and others equally eternal. He says directly, that matter cannot exist
+without it's perpetually corresponding powers. The adjustment of those
+powers he places in the Deity. But as we never see matter without the
+adjustment of those properties as well as the existence of them, this
+drives him at last to say, the Deity must also have created matter,
+according to his system eternally created it, cotemporarily with
+himself. Ideas absurd and irreconcileable!
+
+Discoursing upon the hypothesis of "a fortuitous concourse of atoms"
+Dr. Priestley asks, "what reason we have to think that small masses of
+matter can have power without communication _ab extra_?" Let this
+question be returned, "have we not reason to think so from attraction
+the most common property in matter." To get rid of this difficulty he
+will not allow an atom of matter to be possessed originally of the most
+simple powers, though he is ready to allow matter to have been eternal.
+A magnet according to this system must sometime have existed without
+its magnetic power. He concludes there must be some original existent
+Being. He shall be allowed many original existent Beings if it pleases
+him. A man may be an originally existent being, as well as any other.
+He is superior to other animals in this world. In like manner there may
+be allowed superior Beings to man (as most probably there are) and yet
+those superior Beings not have made man.
+
+Dr. Priestley will have it, that all bodies are moved by external
+force. That does not seem quite necessary. Motion may as well be
+asserted to be originally a property of matter, or its true natural
+state and rest a deprivation of that property, as that rest should be
+its natural state. Hume thought so and Hume was no great fool,
+notwithstanding Dr. Priestley makes so light of him. In fact matter
+never is, and therefore most probably never was found to be in a state
+of rest. Nor has Dr. Priestley any reason to suppose gravity, elasticity
+and electricity to have been imprest on bodies by a superior Being, and
+not originally inherent in matter, unless to favour his own hypothesis
+of a Deity. He absolutely says matter could not have had those powers
+without a communication from a superior and intelligent Being. If
+matter is perceived in regulated motion, it is added bluntly, that it
+must be by a mover possessed of a competent intelligence, and that a
+Being therefore of such power and intelligence _must_ exist. Whoever
+finds no difficulty in believing the contrary will find as little
+difficulty in Mr. Hume's hypothesis, that motion might as well as other
+powers and properties have been originally inherent in matter, or at
+least have been a necessary result of some matter acting upon another.
+
+It has always been a doubt with Theists, whether they can better prove
+their God's existence by moral or physical considerations. Dr.
+Priestley seems to think the _forte_ of the argument lies in the latter
+proof, and lays particular stress upon his observation respecting cause
+and effect, which therefore cannot here be so readily dismissed. He
+makes great reference to the works of art. Theists are always for
+turning their God into an overgrown man. Anthropomorphites has long
+been a term applied to them. They give him hands and eyes nor can they
+conceive him otherwise than as a corporeal Being. In which, as before
+has been said, they are very right, for there can only be in the world
+body and the space which bodies occupy. But granting this great workman
+to have done so much, is it not quite an incontrovertible proposition,
+that whoever first made a thing, as, for example, a chair or a table,
+must have had an adequate idea of it's nature and use. Dr. Priestley
+speaks more correctly in another part, by saying, he must have been
+_capable_ of comprehending it. The nature and use of things are often
+found out after they are made and by different persons than the makers
+of them. Neither is there any analogy between the works of art, as a
+table or house, and of nature, as a man or tree. Therefore there can be
+no arguing from one to another by analogy. Hume observes that the
+former works are done by reason and design, and the latter by
+generation and vegetation, and therefore arguing from effect to causes,
+it is probable, that the universe is generated or vegetated. At least
+after all the observations about a table, it may be modestly asked,
+whether there is not some difference between a table and the world? The
+Doctor will also find some difficulty in explaining the propriety of
+any argument of analogy between men and metals, which he does not at
+other times scruple to make?
+
+A _gratis_ assertion is first made, that all things we see are effects;
+then because we see one thing caused, every thing must have been
+caused. His conclusion of the argument is still more curious, "because
+every thing was caused there must have been something that was not
+caused." The cause ought to be proportioned to the effect. The effect
+is not infinite. Why then attribute infinity to the cause? This is
+Hume's argument. Priestley calls it shortly unworthy of a philosopher.
+Let others judge! But surely, with all this infinity it may be asked,
+why may not there have been an infinity of causes?
+
+Another argument is, that being unable to account, for what is, by any
+thing visible, we must have recourse to something invisible, and that
+invisible power is what he calls God. Apply this argument to gravity,
+and the external force that is said to cause every stone to fall is
+God. But if nothing visible can to us account for the operations of
+nature, why must we have recourse to what is invisible? Why necessary
+to account at all for them? Or why may not visible things account for
+them, although this person or another cannot tell which?
+
+If nothing can begin to exist of itself or by the energy of material
+nature, it is more consistent to allow a plurality of Deities, than one
+immediate Deity. An equality in a plurality of Deities might be
+objectionable. But that is not at all necessary, rather the contrary;
+and so was the Pagan theory, which is not so absurd as the modern one.
+This universe or mundane system may be the work of one hand, another of
+another, and so on. Where is the absurdity of that? If the universe is
+applied to the solar system, there is an appearance of its being formed
+by one design, and in that stile it might be said to be the work of one
+hand. But this Deity is asserted to be infinite, and to have made all
+other worlds and universes, though it does not appear by any unity of
+design that all other worlds and universes are one work with this.
+
+Dr. Priestley himself allows that reason would drive us to require a
+cause of the Deity. He is himself obliged to conclude, after all his
+reasoning, that we must acquiesce in our inability of having any idea
+on the subject; that is, how God could exist without a prior cause. At
+the same time he says the Deity cannot have a cause, and therefore we
+cannot reason about him. Why then all his own reasoning? We make a
+Deity ourselves, fall down and worship him. It is the molten calf over
+again. Idolatry is still practised. The only difference is that now we
+worship idols of our imagination; before of our hands. "Still we must
+necessarily rest at a Being that is infinite;" that is, when our reason
+drives us to the admission of an infinite cause we must necessarily
+stop finitely in our career. Not content with this conclusion he adds,
+that we cannot help perceiving the existence of this cause, though he
+owns that it is not an object of our conceptions. But even the Theist's
+argument does not necessarily drive us to the admission of an infinite
+cause. The argument is, "because there is a man, and man has
+intelligence, we must necessarily admit of a Being of infinitely
+superior intelligence." Would it not be nearly as well to argue,
+"because there is a goose, therefore there must be a man."
+
+What is there more which hinders a series of finite causes to be
+carried back _ad infinitum_, than that the reasoner or contemplator of
+the course of nature is tired. If this eternal series could not exist,
+a Deity might with some propriety be said to follow. Put the argument
+into a syslogistic form.
+
+"The universe shews design;"
+
+"It is absurd to suppose an infinite succession of finite causes;"
+
+"Therefore there is an uncaused intelligent cause of this universe."
+
+Deny the second assertion and the problem is destroyed. So far from its
+being difficult to suppose an eternity, it is the most difficult thing
+in the world to suppose any thing but an eternity. A mind, not afraid
+to think, will find it the most easy contemplation in the world to
+dwell upon. It is at least a bold assertion, that _nothing can be more
+evident_ than that plants and animals could not have proceeded from each
+other by succession from all eternity. Surely to this may be answered,
+that it is more evident that two and two make four. But Dr. Priestley
+goes on to say, "that the primary cause of a man cannot be a man, any
+more than the cause of a sound can be a sound." Experience shews us all
+sound is an effect of a cause. Does experience shew us more of a man
+than that he came from a man and a woman? To allow therefore that all
+men must have come from a man and a woman is as far as we can argue
+upon the subject, whilst in reasoning we trust to experience. An
+argument is well built upon similarity, therefore it is probable if one
+horse had a cause all horses had. But will not the argument be more
+consonant to itself, in supposing all horses had the same cause, and as
+one is seen to be generated from a horse and a mare so all were from
+all eternity. It were a better argument in favour of a Deity or some
+invisible agent to shew that a new animal came every now and then into
+life, without any body's knowing how or where.
+
+It is allowed by Priestley and all other reasoners, that the most
+capital argument that can be formed in support of any thesis is to be
+built upon experience, or analogy to experience. Yet will many of these
+reasoners, Dr. 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 that the present existence
+of things is the result of the force and energy of nature acting upon
+herself, "why this force does not perpetually operate and produce new
+appearances?" Besides that this question may be retorted upon the
+supporters of a Deity, I am thoroughly persuaded, that this force is
+constantly in action, and that every change which animals and
+vegetables undergo, whether of dissolution or renovation, is a manifest
+and undeniable proof of it. Man, and the other Beings which occupy this
+terrestrial globe, are evidently suited to its present state, and an
+alteration in their habitation, such as that of extreme or excessive
+heat, would inevitably destroy them. This is so certain, that bones of
+animals have been dug up which appertain to no species now existing,
+and which must have perished from an alteration in the system of things
+taking place too considerable for it to endure. Whenever the globe
+shall come to that temperament fit for the life of that lost species,
+whatever energy in nature produced it originally, if even it had a
+beginning, will most probably be sufficient to produce it again. Is not
+the reparation of vegitable life the spring equally wonderful now as
+its first production? Yet this is a plain effect of the influence of
+the sun, whose absence would occasion death by a perpetual winter. So
+far this question from containing, in my opinion, a formidable
+difficulty to the Epicurean system, I cannot help judging the continual
+mutability of things as an irrefragable proof of this eternal energy of
+nature. Those who ask, why the great changes in the state of things are
+not more frequent, would absurdly require them to ensue within the
+short space of their existence, forgetting that millions of ages are of
+no importance to the whole mass of matter, though Beings of some
+particular forms may find a wish and an advantage to prolong the term
+of their duration under that form.
+
+If it is said, Nature or the energy of nature is another name for the
+Deity, then may Dr. Priestley and his answerer shake hands; the one is
+no more an atheist than the other. And if it is observed that the
+Energy of Nature having produced men may be capable of re-producing
+them, so that an atheist is not sure to escape punishment for his
+crimes, it is easy to say in return, neither is a Deist sure. A good
+atheist has no more reason to be afraid to be re-produced than a good
+Deist or a Christian. It may be useful for both of them to be good. If
+necessary let it again be repeated, that it is not at all meant in this
+answer to make atheism a plea or protection for immorality. That is a
+charge long and most unjustly put upon the poor undefended atheist. The
+knowledge of a God and even the belief of a providence are found but
+too slight a barrier against human passions, which are apt to fly out
+as licentiously as they would otherwise have done. All, which this
+creed can in reality produce, scarce goes beyond some exterior
+exercises, which are vainly thought to reconcile man to God. It may
+make men build temples, sacrifice victims, offer up prayers, or perform
+something of the like nature; but never break a criminal intrigue,
+restore an ill gotten wealth, or mortify the lust of man. Lust being
+the source of every crime, it is evident (since it reigns as much among
+idolaters and anthropomorphites, as among atheists) idolaters and
+anthropomorphites must be as susceptible of all of crimes as atheists,
+and neither the one set nor the other could form societies, did not a
+curb, stronger then that of religion, namely human laws, repress their
+perverseness. If no other remedy were applied to vice than the
+remonstrances of divines, a great city such as London, would in a
+fortnight's time, fall into the most horrid disorders. Whatever may be
+the difference of faith, vice predominates alike with the Christian and
+the Jew, with the Deist and the atheist. So like are they in their
+actions, that one would think they copied one another. Religion may
+make men follow ceremonies; little is the inconvenience found in them.
+A great triumph truly for religion to make men baptise or fast? When
+did it make men do virtuous actions for virtue's sake, or practise
+fewer inventions to get rich, where riches could not be acquired
+without poverty to others? The true principle most commonly seen in
+human actions, and which philosophy will cure sooner than religion, is
+the natural inclination of man for pleasure, or a taste contracted for
+certain objects by prejudice and habit. These prevail in whatsoever
+faith a man is educated, or with whatever knowledge he may store his
+mind.
+
+But it will be said, those who commit crimes are atheists at the time
+at least they do so. But an atheist cannot be superstitious, and
+criminals are often so at the very moment of their crimes. Religious
+persuasion men are not doubted to have when they vent their rage upon
+others of a different way of thinking, when they express a dread of
+danger or a zeal for ceremonies. These at least are not virtues; and
+few indeed must be those, who at any time are really Theists, if their
+faith is lost or forgotten every time they have a mind to indulge a
+vitious passion. To support still the efficacy of religion in making
+men virtuous is to oppose metaphysical reasoning to the truth of fact;
+it is like the philosopher denying motion, and being refuted by one of
+his scholars walking across the room. If then it is true, as history
+and the whole course of human life shew it is, that men can still
+plunge themselves into all sorts of crimes, though they are persuaded
+of the truth of religion, which is made to inform them that God
+punishes sin and rewards good actions, it cannot but be suspected that
+religion even encourages crimes, by the hopes it gives of pardon
+through the efficacy of prayer; at all events it must be granted, that
+those who hold up a belief in God as a sufficient proof and character
+of a good life are most egregiously mistaken.
+
+Some Theists may have lighter sense of personal dignity than some
+atheists. If the Theist thinks himself allied to and connected with
+the Deity he may plume himself upon his station; but how apt are
+those worshipers of a God, instead of having a high sense of personal
+dignity, to debase themselves into the most abject beings, dreading
+even the shadow of their own phantom. An atheist feeling himself to be
+a link in the grand chain of Nature, feels his relative importance and
+dreads no imaginary Being. An atheist, who is so from inattention and
+without intelligence, may indeed feel himself as much debased as the
+meanest and most humble Theist.
+
+Another argument against atheists is, that where men are atheists it is
+generally found that their usual turn of thinking and habits of life
+have inclined to make them so. Is not this to be turned upon Theists?
+But granting that the idea of a supreme author is more pleasing, and
+that the argument with respect to the existence or non-existence of a
+God was in _equilibrio_, it is not therefore right to conclude that the
+mind ought to be determined by this or any other bias. Nor is it quite
+clear if there is no God (by which term let it again be noticed, is
+meant a Being of supreme intelligence, the contriver of the material
+universe and yet no part of the material system) that the world in
+which man inhabits is either fatherless or deserted. The wisdom of
+nature supplies in reality what is only hoped for from the protection
+of the Deity. If the world has so good a mother, a father may well be
+spared especially such a haughty jealous, and vindictive one as God is
+most generally represented to be. Dr. Priestley being clear in his
+opinion; that the being of a God is capable of being proved by reason,
+is not so weak as some of his fellow-labourers, who hold the powers of
+reason in so low estimation as to be incapable of themselves to arrive
+at almost any truth. He must however allow, if reason proves a Deity
+and his attributes there was less use of revelation to prove them. But
+the learned advocates of a Deity differ greatly among themselves,
+whether his existence is capable of being ascertained by fixt
+principles of reason. After such a difference and the instance of so
+many great men in all ages, from Democritus downward, who have
+confidently denied the being of a God, whose arguments the learned Dr.
+Cudworth, in the last century, only by fully and fairly stating, with
+all the answers in his power to give (though his zeal in religion was
+never doubted) was thought by other divines to have given a weight to
+atheism not well to be overturned, it is surprising that it should be
+the common belief of this day, that an argument in support of atheism
+cannot stand a moment, and that even no man in his senses can ever hold
+such a doctrine. All that Epicurus and Lucretius have so greatly and
+convincingly said is swept away in a moment by these better reasoners,
+who yet scruple not to declare, with Dr. Priestley, that what they
+reason about is not the subject of human understanding. But let it be
+asked, is it not absurd to reason with a man about that of which that
+same man asserts we have no idea at all? Yet will Dr. Priestley argue,
+and say it is of no importance, whether the person with whom he argues
+has a conception or not of the subject. "Having no ideas includes no
+impossibility," therefore he goes on with his career of words to argue
+about an unseen being with another whom he will allow to have no idea
+of the subject and yet it shall be of no avail in the dispute, whether
+he has or no, or whether he is capable or incapable of having any.
+Reason failing, the passions are called upon, and the imagined God is
+represented at one time, with all the terrors of a revengeful tyrant,
+at another with all the tenderness of an affectionate parent. Shall
+then such a tremendous Being with such a care for the creatures he has
+made, suffer his own existence to be a perpetual doubt? If the course
+of nature does not give sufficient proof, why does not the hand divine
+shew itself by an extraordinary interposition of power? It is allowed
+miracles ought not to be cheap or plenty. One or two at least every
+thousand years might be admitted. But this is a perpetual standing
+miracle, that such a Being as the depicted God, the author of nature
+and all its works, should exist and yet his existence be perpetually in
+doubt, or require a Jesus, a Mahomet or a Priestley to reveal it. Is
+not the writing of this very answer to the last of those three great
+luminaries of religion a proof, that no God, or no _such_ God at least,
+exists. Hear the admirable words of the author of "The System of
+Nature;" _Comment permet il qu'un mortel comme moi ose attaquer ses
+droits, ses titres, son existence meme?_
+
+Dr. Clarke, Mr. Hume and Helvetius, are writers whose arguments for and
+against a Godhead Dr. Priestley has much noted. The former says, "the
+Deity must have been infinite, if self-existent, because all things in
+the universe are made by him." Are all things in the universe infinite?
+Why an infinite maker of a finite work? It is juster to argue, that
+whatever is self-existent must have been eternal. Nor is there any
+great objection to the converse of the proposition properly taken, that
+whatever is not self-existent must have been created and therefore
+cannot have been eternal. If this is fair arguing, matter cannot
+according to Dr. Priestley's system have been created and be eternal
+also. But Dr. Priestley has no inclination to reconcile his opinions
+with those of Dr. Clarke. He has chosen a fairer method, and that is,
+to refute the arguments of former asserters of a Deity as well as to
+establish his own. Dr. Clarke he most effectually exposes where he
+enters upon the subject of space. It seems as if Dr. Clarke, having
+asserted that the Deity necessarily existed, had a mind that nothing
+else should necessarily exist but the Deity; and conscious that space
+at least also necessarily existed, he makes universal space an
+attribute of the Deity. With this reverie in his head he raises a
+syllogism of complete nonsense (_vide Priestley's Letters_, P. 170.)
+where he supposes space to be nothing though he also supposes it to be
+an attribute of the Deity. Making it therefore an attribute of the
+Deity and knowing that space is eternal and unmeasurable he takes upon
+himself thereby also clearly to have proved that the Deity is so.
+Exclude the Deity, space will still exist and still be eternal and
+immense. Dr. Priestley knew well that Dr. Clarke's argument in this
+respect was all a fallacy, and therefore he shews his sense in not
+adopting it. It is in fact an abuse of terms unworthy of a scientific
+reasoner.
+
+The only argument attempted by Dr. Clarke, why the Deity must have
+had no cause, is, because it is necessary he should have none.
+Dr. Clarke says roundly that necessity is the cause of the existence
+of the Deity. This is very near the language of the ancients, who
+held that Fate controuled the Gods. Necessity is therefore the first
+God. Why then any other God than Necessity? What more has Helvetius
+said than that?
+
+It is an old and unanswerable argument that, granting a God and his
+power infinite, whatever he wills is executed; but man and other
+animals are unhappy, therefore he does not will they should be happy.
+Or take the argument the other way and it will equally conclude against
+his power. With regard to Mr. Hume's famous observations upon the
+evidence of miracles, Dr. Priestley thinks to make a short havock of
+them by observing that new, and therefore miraculous appearances, are
+continually presenting themselves; but although such new appearances
+may be instanced, they are not contrary to former experience, only in
+addition to it. With this allusion to Natural Philosophy, Dr. Priestley
+thinks himself in one short sentence to have discussed all Mr. Hume's
+observations upon miracles. _"Which is more likely, that the relater of
+a miracle should have lied or been deceived, or that the thing related
+should have existed contrary to experience prior and subsequent?"_
+Let the force of this observation be considered and believe in the
+history of miracles who can! To give a finishing stroke to poor
+Mr. Hume, Dr. Priestley observes that literary fame was Hume's only
+motive and consolation, as he said himself, in all his laborious
+enquiries and enlightened writings. At this he exclaims, "What gloomy
+prospect and poor comfort he must have had at his death!" If so,
+how much was he the greater man so well to have gone through that
+last scene!
+
+The honour which Dr. Priestley gives to Helvetius, the author of that
+ingenious and satisfactory work intitled "The System of Nature," does
+credit to his own candour. He applauds him for speaking out, he ought
+therefore to applaud this answer for the same reason. It is true he
+seems to have discovered one incongruity in the reasoning of Helvetius.
+The words he imputes to him are, "that nature has no object, because
+nature acts necessarily; man has an object; yet man also acts
+necessarily." In the same way nature might have an object though it
+acted necessarily. But Helvetius adds, that the object which man has is
+a necessary object. The best defence of Helvetius (not in behalf of
+that passage, but of his general system) is to let him speak at large
+for himself; and the following quotation Dr. Priestley and the reader
+may accept as a specimen of the strength and justice of his argument,
+and as the conclusion of this answer.
+
+"Theologians tell us, that the disorder and evil, which is seen in the
+world, is not absolute and real, but relatively and apparently such,
+and does not disprove the divine wisdom and goodness. But may not one
+reply, that the goodness and wonderful order which they so much extol,
+and on which they found their notions of those qualities in God, are in
+a similar way only relative and apparent. If it be only our co-existence
+with the causes which surround us, and our manner of perceiving them,
+that constitute the order of nature for us, and authorise us to attribute
+wisdom and goodness to the maker of what surround us, should not also
+our mode of existence and perception authorise us to call what is
+hurtful to us disorder, and to attribute impotence, ignorance, or
+malice, to that Being which we would suppose to actuate nature.
+
+Some pretend that the supremely wise God can derive goodness and
+happiness to us from the midst of those ills which he permits us to
+undergo in this world. Are these men privy counsellors of the Divinity,
+or on what do they found their romantic hopes? They will doubtless say,
+that they judge of God's conduct by analogy, and that from the present
+appearance of his wisdom and goodness, they have a right to infer his
+future wisdom and goodness. But do not the present appearances of his
+want of wisdom or goodness justify us in concluding, that he will
+always want them? If they are so often manifestly deficient in this
+world, what can assure us that they will abound more in the next? This
+kind of language therefore rests upon no other basis than a prejudiced
+imagination, and signifies, that some men, having without examination,
+adopted an opinion that God is good, cannot admit that he will consent
+to let his creatures remain constantly unhappy. Yet this grand
+hypothesis, of the unalterable felicity of mankind hereafter, is
+insufficient to justify the Divinity in permitting the present sleeting
+and transitory marks of injustice and disorder. If God can have been
+unjust for a moment, he has derogated, during that moment at least,
+from his divine perfection, and is not unchangeably good; his justice
+then is liable to temporary alteration, and, if this be the case, who
+can give security for his justice and goodness continuing unalterable
+in a future life, the notion of which is set up only to exculpate his
+deviation from those qualities in this?
+
+In spite of the experience, which every instant gives the lie to that
+beneficence which men suppose in God, they continue to call him good.
+When we bewail the miserable victims of those disorders and calamities
+that so often overwhelm our species, we are confidently told that these
+ills are but apparent, and that if our short-sighted mind could fathom
+the depths of divine wisdom, we should always behold the greatest
+blessings result from what we denominate evil. How despicable is so
+frivolous an answer! If we can find no good but in such things as
+affect us in a manner which is agreeable and pleasing to our actual
+existence, we shall be obliged to confess that those things which
+affect us, even but for a time, in, a painful manner, are as certainly
+evil to us. To vindicate God's visiting mankind with these evils some
+tell us, that he is just, and that they, are chastisements inflicted on
+mankind to punish the wrongs he has received from men. Thus a feeble
+mortal has the power to irritate and injure the almighty and eternal
+Being who created this world. To offend any one is, to afflict him,
+to diminish in some degree his happiness, to make him feel a painful
+sensation. How can man possibly disturb the felicity of the
+all-powerful sovereign of nature! How can a frail creature, who
+has received from God his being and his temper, act against the
+inclinations of an irresistable force which never consents to sin and
+disorder? Besides justice, according to the only ideas which we can
+have of it, supposes a fixt desire to render every one his due. But
+theologians constantly preach that God owes us nothing, that the good
+things he affords are the voluntary effects of his beneficence, and
+that without any violence of his equity he can dispose of his creatures
+as his choice or caprice may impel him. In this doctrine I see not the
+smallest shadow of justice, but the most hideous tyranny and shocking
+abuse of power. In fact do we not see virtue and innocence plunged into
+an abyss of misery, while wickedness rears its triumphant head under
+the empire of this God whose justice is so much extalled? "This misery,
+say you, is but for a time." Very well, Sirs, but your God is unjust
+for a time. "He chastises whom he loves (you will say) for their own
+benefit." But if he is perfectly good, why will he let them suffer at
+all? "He does it, perhaps to try them" But, if he knows all things,
+what occasion is there for him to try any? If he is omnipotent, why
+need he vex himself about the vain design any one may form against him?
+Omnipotence ought to be exempt from any such passions, as having
+neither equals nor rivals. But if this God is jealous of his glory, his
+titles and prerogative, why does he permit such numbers of men to
+offend him? Why are any found daring enough to refuse the incense which
+his pride expects? _Why am I a feeble mortal permitted to attack his
+titles, his attributes, and even his existence?_ Is this permission of
+punishment on me for the abuse of his grace and favour? He should never
+have permitted me to abuse them. Or the grace he bestowed should have
+been efficacious and have directed my steps according to his liking.
+"But, say you, he makes man free." Alas? why did he present him with a
+gift of which he must have foreseen the abuse? Is this faculty of free
+agency, which enables me to resist his power, to corrupt and rob him of
+his worshippers, and in fine to bring eternal misery on myself, a
+present worthy of his infinite goodness? In consequence of the
+pretended abuse of this fatal present, which an omniscient and good God
+ought not to have bestowed on Beings capable of abusing it,
+everlasting, inexpressible torments are reserved for the transitory
+crimes of a Being made liable to commit them. Would that father be
+called good, reasonable, just and kind, who put a sharp-edged and
+dangerous knife into the hand of a playful, and imprudent child, whom
+he before knew to be imprudent, and punished him during the remainder
+of his life for cutting himself with it? Would that prince be called
+just and merciful, who, not regarding any proportion between the
+offence and the punishment, should perpetually exercise his power of
+vengeance, over one of his subjects who, being drunk, had rashly
+offended against his vanity, without causing any real harm to him,
+especially, when the prince had taken pains to make him drunk? Should
+we consider as almighty a monarch, whose dominions were in such
+confusion and disorder, that, except a small number obedient servants,
+all his subjects were every instant despising his laws, defeating his
+will and insulting his person? Let ecclesiastics then acknowledge, that
+their God is an assemblage of incompatible qualities, as
+incomprehensible to their understanding as to mine. No: they say, in
+reply to these difficulties, that wisdom and justice in God, are
+qualities so much above or so unlike those qualities in us, that they
+bear no relation or affinity towards human wisdom and justice. But,
+pray how am I to form to myself an idea of the divine perfection,
+unless it has some resemblance to those virtues which I observe in my
+fellow creatures and feel in myself? If the justice of God is not the
+same with human justice, why lastly do any men pretend to announce it,
+comprehend and explain it to others?"
+
+
+
+
+
+
+POSTSCRIPT.
+
+
+Previous to this publication the editor sent the following Letter
+to Dr. Priestley.
+
+
+"Reverend Sir,
+
+Had you thought it impossible for man to hold different sentiments
+respecting Natural religion and the proof of the existence of a God
+than you do, the Letters to a Philosophical Unbeliever would not have
+appeared, much less would you have invited an answer by promising a
+reply to every objection. Differing from you in sentiment I am the man
+who enter with you in the lists; but I find myself upon consultation
+with my friends under more difficulties than you were, and more to
+stand in need of courage in taking up the glove, than you needed to
+have in throwing it down. For this dispute is not like others in
+philosophy, where the vanquished can only dread ridicule, contempt and
+disappointment; here, whether victor or vanquished, your opponent has
+to dread, beside ecclesiastical censure, the scourges, chains and
+pillories of the courts of Law.
+
+I accuse you not of laying a trap for an unguarded author, but I ask
+your friendly opinion, whether I can, with temporal safety at least,
+maintain the contrary of your arguments in proof of a Deity and his
+attributes. If I cannot, no wonder the Theist cries _Victoria!_ but
+then it is a little ungenerous to ask for objections. Of you, I may
+certainly expect, that you will promise to use your influence, as well
+with lawyers as ecclesiastics, not to stir up a persecution against a
+poor atheist in case there should be one found in the kingdom, which
+people in general will not admit to be possible; or, if a persecution
+could ensue, that you and your friends, favourers of free enquiry,
+will at least bear the expences of it.
+
+     I am,
+     Reverend Sir,
+     Your most humble obedient servant,
+     WILLIAM HAMMON.
+
+Oct. 23. 1781.
+
+_To the Reverend Dr. Priestley._
+
+
+To this letter Dr. Priestley sent no answer; or no answer ever came
+to hand.
+
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Answer to Dr. Priestley's Letters to a
+Philosophical Unbeliever, by Matthew Turner
+
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