and a supreme distributive justice in the universe, I ought to expect
some more particular reward of the good, and punishment of the bad,
beyond the ordinary course of events; I here find the same fallacy,
which I have before endeavoured to detect. You persist in imagining,
that, if we grant that divine existence, for which you so earnestly
contend, you may safely infer consequences from it, and add something
to the experienced order of nature, by arguing from the attributes which
you ascribe to your gods. You seem not to remember, that all your
reasonings on this subject can only be drawn from effects to causes; and
that every argument, deducted from causes to effects, must of necessity
be a gross sophism; since it is impossible for you to know anything of
the cause, but what you have antecedently, not inferred, but discovered
to the full, in the effect.

109. But what must a philosopher think of those vain reasoners, who,
instead of regarding the present scene of things as the sole object of
their contemplation, so far reverse the whole course of nature, as to
render this life merely a passage to something farther; a porch, which
leads to a greater, and vastly different building; a prologue, which
serves only to introduce the piece, and give it more grace and
propriety? Whence, do you think, can such philosophers derive their idea
of the gods? From their own conceit and imagination surely. For if they
derived it from the present phenomena, it would never point to anything
farther, but must be exactly adjusted to them. That the divinity may
_possibly_ be endowed with attributes, which we have never seen exerted;
may be governed by principles of action, which we cannot discover to be
satisfied: all this will freely be allowed. But still this is mere
_possibility_ and hypothesis. We never can have reason to _infer_ any
attributes, or any principles of action in him, but so far as we know
them to have been exerted and satisfied.