Answer to Dr. Priestley's Letters to a Philosophical Unbeliever by Matthew Turner
page 38 of 60 (63%)
page 38 of 60 (63%)
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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, |
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