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