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affirm the contrary would be to assert that it may be both necessarily existent and contingent, which is absurd.

4. That is contingent which either might not have been at all, or might have been different from what it is with regard to qualities, without implying any contradiction.

5. There can be no physical law of origination. Without matter as a previously existing subject, physical laws of every description are clearly nonentities. We may add, that the existence of such a law is disproved by fact. Laws of change, and of generation or reproduction, there are, but all these suppose the existence of matter, and of matter not in one form in which the causal property may act, but frequently in others on whom the cause may operate to the production of the effect. If there were law of origination with regard to matter, or an absolute necessity for its coming into existence, that law would continue to operate for ever, unless subject to the control or veto of some all-powerful intelligent being, to admit whom would be to supersede all need of recourse to the law; and if it continue in uncontrolled operation, then all space must long ere now have been filled, or new systems would still be starting into being, to the perturbation and consequent dissolution of the present arrangement of the universe.

These principles may facilitate the establishment of the following propositions.

I.-Something must have been eternal. Upon the axiom that nothing can never produce something, or that something can never spring from nothing, it must be admitted on all hands that something did exist from eternity.

II.-The idea that space is a homogeneous body, and therefore an infinite being existing from eternity, is palpably false ; since

space is merely vacuum, and assumes the definite idea of space only as marking the relations of distance and magnitude among existing beings. Abstract from them, it is pure nonentity; and therefore, by the maxim, could not be the cause of the material bodies which now occupy it.*

III.—The Something that existed from eternity must have been Necessarily existent. “ To suppose an eternal succes

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See on the idea of Space a Dissertation in the manner, and style also, of Cicero, entitled “ De finibus Mundi."—WERENFELSII Opusc. 4to.

sion of merely dependant beings proceeding one from another in endless progression, without any original and independent cause at all, is to suppose that things which have in their own nature no necessity of existence were from eternity, which is the same absurdity and express contradiction as to suppose them produced by nothing at any determinate period. Ti which existed from eternity must therefore have been an independent and unchangeable being, and by consequence self-existent or necessarily existing."*

IV.-That which is self-existent must be infinite, uniform, simple, indivisible, and incorruptible.” for otherwise it might have been different from what it is, or might not have been at all; that is, it would be either wholly or partially contingent, which involves a contradiction.

V.-It must have been “ but one,”—for to suppose two or more independent and infinite beings is also an express contradiction.”+

MATTER.

VI.—Matter cannot possibly be the something that existed from eternity.

Since its permanent properties are so few, and by these its perfection so limited, even in regard to the ideas which may be formed of possible perfection from the facts of intelligence, volition, &c., it must be unreasonable to suppose that it possesses the first, the greatest, and most wonderful of all properties, Self-existence. But that it does, is clearly disproved by the very complexion of its distinctive and permanent properties; for according to Prop. iv. and v. Self-existence is necessarily connected with the highest kind of physical perfection, characterised by simplicity, infinitude, indivisibility, &c.,-of which

• Nearly the same argument is thus presented by a great master of eloquence, “ An eternal succession of finite beings involves in it a contradiction, and is iberefore plainly impossible. As the supposition is made to get quit of the idea of any one baving existed from eternity, each of the beings in the succession must have begun in time; but the succession itself is eternal. We have then the succession of beings infinitely earlier than any being in the succession; or in other words, a series of beings running on, ad infinitum, before it reached any particular being, which is absurd."

Hall's Serm. on Infidelity. + On these three propositions marked with the signs of quotation, see Dr. Clarke's Demonstration of the being and attributes of God.

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matter is evidently devoid, and to which its real properties are directly opposed.

Other considerations might be urged. --Self-existence is not intuitively one of the properties of matter; and as its claim to this high degree of perfection cannot be ascertained by the senses, which alone inform us of its real properties, so there is no argument in support of the claim from any thing ascertained by the senses. If there were, it must be founded on the indestructibility of matter, as this is the only property which can at all be supposed to bear on the subject. But the Atheist is not at liberty to assume, that in some form or another, matter is absolutely indestructible, as the medium of disproving the being of a God. He must first

prove

that even on the suppo sition of a divine power, annihilation is impossible, since by our hypothesis he who made any substance, must be able to destroy it,—he who called it into being, could if he pleased as easily reduce it to nothing. The assumption of absolute indestructibility is a petitio principii, a begging the question. But granting that without such a power, matter is really indestructible, this will not prove that it is necessarily existent ; for if it be so, it must have this high character, either in all its parts, or only in mass. If it be necessarily existent in all its parts, then there are more independent beings than one; if only in mass, still, as it is confessedly divisible, the one independent being will not be simple and invariable, but capable of change and even of multiplication ad infinitum. Again, it will not be pretended that the souls of men are self-existent and absolutely eternal, that is without commencement as well as termination of being. Suppose with the Atheist that these are material, they prove that self-existence is not an essential property of matter. Grant them to be spirits (as may afterwards be proved), reason reclaims against ascribing to gross matter a higher property than belongs even to spirit, and a property which must necessarily imply that matter gives being to spirit.

VII.-As the matter of the universe was not eternal as a self-existent being, so it could not make itself.

There is, we have seen, no physical law of origination. And upon the maxim, that nothing can proceed from nothing, it is impossible that matter could at any determinate period start into being. Then, to say that it made itself is absurd, since this would not only imply activity, which is none of its essential properties, but the existence of the property prior to the subject, an activity producing the very thing in which it resides, and without which it could neither exist nor operate. In fine, it involves no contradiction to suppose that matter might never have existed at all ; it is therefore contingent, and must have had a cause, (Prin. 3, 4.), which could not be in itself, since this is inconsistent with the very idea of its being contingent, and must therefore have been without it,-a cause distinct from it, and adequate to its production in all its amplitude and variety of modes.

THE FORM OF THE UNIVERSE.

VIII.-Granting (ex abundanti) that matter had been eternal, or had somehow or other come into being, subject to physical laws,—the present form of the universe could neither have been spontaneously assumed by matter, nor produced by the operation of these laws.

The present forms of matter are not essential to it, for its characteristic properties are simply extension, solidity, divisibility, mobility, inactivity, repulsion, and gravity, or more generally attraction. We argue then, that without implying any contradiction, the form of the universe might have been different from what it presently is, since there was no necessity arising from the properties of matter, for its having precisely that form, and no other, which we discern in its several parts, or in the combination and arrangement of the whole. It follows, that the present form of the universe is contingent. It must therefore have had a cause without itself. This cause again must have been either necessarily existent, or contingent. If the former, the point at issue is decided ; if the latter, the reasoning is only protracted a little,—for since a contingent cause must itself have had a previous cause; and since an infinite series of contingent causes is absurd, we land at last either in the idea that something was produced by nothing, which is also absurd, or in the existence of an independent and necessary Being.

To complete the argument, subjoin to these metaphysical deductions, the reasoning of Sir Isaac Newton, on the possible effect of physical laws.* Since the form of the universe is contingent and requires a necessary cause, that cause cannot be found in any of the laws of nature. To give rise to these, matter must be supposed already in existence, and, prior to its present forms, diffused. If the space through which its

• Four Leiters to Dr. Bentley on the argument for a Deity.

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divine power.

particles were diffused was finite, then “ all the matter on the outside would by its innate gravity tend to all the matter on the inside, and by consequence fall down into the middle, and there compose one great spherical mass.” In order to this, however, it would have been farther requisite, “ that a central particle should have been so inaccurately placed, as to be always,” even during the coalescence, “ equally attracted on all sides, and thereby continue without motion, a thing hardly conceivable without the disposition of a voluntary agent and

“ The fixing of such a central particle," says Sir Isaac, “ appears to me fully as hard as to make the sharpest needle stand upright upon its point on a looking-glass,-for if the

very mathematical centre of the central particle were not in the very mathematical centre of the attractive power of the whole mass, the particle could not be attracted cqually on all sides.” But supposing a particle so placed, only one mass, not such a multitude and diversity of bodies, and at such distances, as constitute the present system of the universe, would have been formed. If, on the other hand, the space was infinite-granting the application of that term to dimension without bounds to be just and conceivable, which a mind nowise disposed to scepticism may yet be allowed to doubt,then, a different effect would have followed, according as the particles of matter were either evenly diffused or not.--" If evenly diffused, that is, if every particle was so placed as equally to attract all the rest, then they would never have coalesced,” —their gravity would have kept them where they were. Even to admit that all the particles could be so accurately poised by chance in infinite space, as to stand still in perfect equilibrium, is more than can be demanded of reason: “ this, says

Sir Isaac, “ I reckon as hard as to make not one needle only, but an infinite number of them stand accurately poised on their points : The thing may be possible, at least to a divine power, but if they were once poised so accurately, they would continue in that position without motion or approximation for ever, unless” the equilibrium were destroyed, and they were “ put into motion by the same power.”—If the particles were not evenly diffused, then they 66 would have convened not into one mass, but some into one, some into another, so as to make an infinite number of great masses, scattered at great distances from one another throughout all that infinite space."

This last, therefore, is the only supposition on which an atheist can pretend to account for the contingent formation of o he sun, the earth, the stars, and all the system of nature. The

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