without beginning and without end; omnipotent, omniscient, immutable,
infinite, and incomprehensible: We must be far removed from the smallest
tendency to scepticism not to be apprehensive, that we have here got
quite beyond the reach of our faculties. So long as we confine our
speculations to trade, or morals, or politics, or criticism, we make
appeals, every moment, to common sense and experience, which strengthen
our philosophical conclusions, and remove, at least in part, the
suspicion which we so justly entertain with regard to every reasoning
that is very subtle and refined. But, in theological reasonings, we have
not this advantage; while, at the same time, we are employed upon
objects, which, we must be sensible, are too large for our grasp, and of
all others, require most to be familiarised to our apprehension. We are
like foreigners in a strange country, to whom every thing must seem
suspicious, and who are in danger every moment of transgressing against
the laws and customs of the people with whom they live and converse. We
know not how far we ought to trust our vulgar methods of reasoning in
such a subject; since, even in common life, and in that province which is
peculiarly appropriated to them, we cannot account for them, and are
entirely guided by a kind of instinct or necessity in employing them.

All sceptics pretend, that, if reason be considered in an abstract view,
it furnishes invincible arguments against itself; and that we could never
retain any conviction or assurance, on any subject, were not the
sceptical reasonings so refined and subtle, that they are not able to
counterpoise the more solid and more natural arguments derived from the
senses and experience. But it is evident, whenever our arguments lose
this advantage, and run wide of common life, that the most refined
scepticism comes to be upon a footing with them, and is able to oppose
and counterbalance them. The one has no more weight than the other. The
mind must remain in suspense between them; and it is that very suspense