THE BELFAST ADDKESS. 



acknowledged God as the great first cause, he im- 

 mediately dropped the idea, applied the known laws of 

 mechanics to the atoms, and deduced from them all 

 vital phenomena. He defended Epicurus, and dwelt 

 upon his purity, l>oth of doctrine and of life. True he 

 was a heathen, but so was Aristotle. Epicurus assailed 

 superstition and religion, and rightly, because he did 

 not know the true religion. He thought that the gods 

 neither rewarded nor punished, and he adored them 

 purely in consequence of their completeness : here we 

 see, says Gassendi, the reverence of the child, instead of 

 the fear of the slave. The errors of Epicurus shall be 

 corrected, and the body of his truth retained. Gassendi 

 then proceeds, as any heathen might have done, to 

 build up the world, and all that therein is, of atoms and 

 molecules. God, who created earth and water, plants 

 and animals, produced in the first place a definite 

 number of atoms, which constituted the seed of all 

 things. Then began that series of combinations and 

 decompositions which now goes on, and which will con- 

 tinue in future. The principle of every change resides 



