viii THEISM; EVOLUTION OF THEOLOGY 183 



virtuous and the vicious course of life ; but am sensible that, 

 to a well-disposed mind, every advantage is on the side of 

 the former. And what can you say more, allowing all your 

 suppositions and reasonings? You tell me, indeed, that this 

 disposition of things proceeds from intelligence and design. 

 But, whatever it proceeds from, the disposition itself, on 

 which depends our happiness and misery, and consequently 

 our conduct and deportment in life, is still the same. It 

 is still open for me, as well as you, to regulate my behaviour 

 by my experience of past events. And if you affirm that, 

 while a divine providence is allowed, and a supreme dis- 

 tributive 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 ex- 

 istence for which you so earnestly contend, you may safely 

 infer consequences from it, and add something to the ex- 

 perienced 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 deduced 

 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. 



" But what must a philosopher think of those vain rea- 

 soners 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 pas- 

 sage to something further ; 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 I 

 Whence, do you think, can such philosophers derive their 

 idea of the gods ? From their own conceit and imagination 

 surely. For if they derive it from the present phenomena, 

 it would never point to anything further, but must be ex- 



