Answer to Dr. Priestley's Letters to a Philosophical Unbeliever by Matthew Turner
page 50 of 60 (83%)
page 50 of 60 (83%)
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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, |
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