By artfully taking for granted what no Universalist can admit, and
assuming cases altogether dissimilar to be perfectly analogous, our
natural theologians find no difficulty in proving that God is, was, and
ever will be; that after contemplating His own perfections, a period
sufficiently long for 'eternity to begin and end in,' He said, let there
be matter, and there was matter; that with Him all things are possible,
and He, of course, might easily have kept, as well as made, man upright
and happy, but could not consistently with his own wisdom, or with due
regard to his own glorification. Wise in their generation, these 'blind
leaders of the blind' ascribe to this Deity of their own invention
powers impossible, acts inconceivable, and qualities incompatible; thus
erecting doctrinal systems on no sounder basis than their own ignorance;
deifying their own monstrous errors, and filling the earth with misery,
madness, and crime.

The writer who declared theology _ignorance of natural causes reduced to
system_, did not strike wide of the true mark. It is plain that the
argument from design, so vastly favoured by theologians, amounts to
neither more nor less than ignorance of natural causes reduced to
system. An argument to be sound must be soundly premised. But here is an
argument whose primary premise is a false premise--a mere begging of the
very question in dispute. Did Universalists _admit_ the universe was
contrived, designed, or adapted, they could not _deny_ there must have
been at least one Being to contrive, design, or adapt; but they see no
analogy between a watch made with hands out of something, and a universe
made without hands out of nothing. Universalists are unable to perceive
the least resemblance between the circumstance of one intelligent body
re-forming or changing the condition of some other body, intelligent or
non-intelligent, and the circumstance of a bodiless Being creating all
bodies; of a partless Being acting upon all parts; and of a passionless