The third dogma may be rated a truism--it being evidently true that a
thing or Being, which has existed from eternity without any external
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 Atheists, 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
repetitions or expansions 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 an
Atheist--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 so
readily embrace the idea of a God, forgetting that if the idea of
eternal matter shock our sense of the _probable_, the idea of an eternal
Being who existed _before_ matter, _if well considered_, is sufficient
to shock all sense of the _possible_.

The man who is contented with the universe, who stops at _that_ has at
least the satisfaction of dealing with something tangible--but he who