created, as well as by many wonderful signs, and the clear voice of
revelation. We do not attempt to prove it; that were easy and obvious:
but our more difficult endeavour at present is to show how antecedently
probable it was that God should be: and that so being, He should be
invested with the reasonable attributes, wherewithal we know His
glorious Nature to be clothed.

Take then our beginning where we will, there must have existed in that
"originally" either Something, or Nothing. It is a clear matter to
prove, _à posteriori_, that Something did exist; because something
exists now: every matter and every derived spirit must have had a
Father; _ex nihilo nihil fit_, is not more a truth, than that creation
must have had a Creator. However, leaving this plain path (which I only
point at by the way for obvious mental uses), let us now try to get at
the great antecedent probability that in the beginning Something should
have been, rather than Nothing.

The term, Nothing, is a fallacious one: it does not denote an existence,
as Something does, but the end of an existence. It is in fact a
negation, which must prësuppose a matter once in being and possible to
be denied; it is an abstraction, which cannot happen unless there be
somewhat to be taken away; the idea of vacuity must be posterior to that
of fullness; the idea of no tree is incompetent to be conceived without
the previous idea of _a_ tree; the idea of nonentity suggests, _ex vi
termini_, a pre-existent entity; the idea of Nothing, of necessity,
prësupposes Something. And a Something once having been, it would still
and for ever continue to be, unless sufficient cause be found for its
removal; that cause itself, you will observe, being a Something. The
chances are forcibly in favour of continuance, that is of perpetuity;
and the likelihoods proclaim loudly that there should be an Existence.