you, solid and philosophical.

In a word, CLEANTHES, a man who follows your hypothesis is able perhaps
to assert, or conjecture, that the universe, sometime, arose from
something like design: but beyond that position he cannot ascertain one
single circumstance; and is left afterwards to fix every point of his
theology by the utmost license of fancy and hypothesis. This world, for
aught he knows, is very faulty and imperfect, compared to a superior
standard; and was only the first rude essay of some infant deity, who
afterwards abandoned it, ashamed of his lame performance: it is the work
only of some dependent, inferior deity; and is the object of derision to
his superiors: it is the production of old age and dotage in some
superannuated deity; and ever since his death, has run on at adventures,
from the first impulse and active force which it received from him. You
justly give signs of horror, DEMEA, at these strange suppositions; but
these, and a thousand more of the same kind, are CLEANTHES's
suppositions, not mine. From the moment the attributes of the Deity are
supposed finite, all these have place. And I cannot, for my part, think
that so wild and unsettled a system of theology is, in any respect,
preferable to none at all.

These suppositions I absolutely disown, cried CLEANTHES: they strike me,
however, with no horror, especially when proposed in that rambling way in
which they drop from you. On the contrary, they give me pleasure, when I
see, that, by the utmost indulgence of your imagination, you never get
rid of the hypothesis of design in the universe, but are obliged at every
turn to have recourse to it. To this concession I adhere steadily; and
this I regard as a sufficient foundation for religion.