Superstition Unveiled by Charles Southwell
page 53 of 74 (71%)
page 53 of 74 (71%)
![]() | ![]() |
|
but an independent Being can have no relations, and consequently must
act without motives. Now, as no intelligent _human_ action can be imagined without necessary precursors in the shape of motives, reasoning from analogy, it seems impossible that the unchangeable and independent Being, Clarke was so sure must ever have existed, could have created the universe, seeing he could have had no _motive_ or _inducement_ to create it. The third dogma may be rated a truism--it being evidently true that a thing or Being, which has existed from eternity without any eternal cause of its existence, must be self-existent: but of course that dogma leaves the disputed question, namely, whether matter, or something _not_ matter, is self-existent, just where it found it. The fourth dogma is not questioned by Universalists, as they are quite convinced that it is not possible for us to comprehend the substance or essence of an immaterial Being. The other dogmas we need not enlarge upon, as they are little more than repetition or expansion of the preceding one. Indeed, much of the foregoing would be superfluous, were it not that it serves to illustrate, so completely and clearly theistical absurdities. The only dogma worth overturning, of the eight here noticed, is the _first_, for if that fall, the rest must fall with it. If, for example, the reader is convinced that it is more probable matter is mutable as regards _form_ but eternal as regards _essence_, than that it was willed into existence by a Being said to be eternal and immutable, he at once becomes a Universalist--for if matter always was, no Being could have been before it, nor can any exist after it. It is because men in general are shocked at the idea of matter without beginning and without end, that they do |
|