33*2 RELIGIOUS VIEWS. 



On the contrary, by assuming perpetually the ex- 

 isting laws as the basis of their reasoning, with- 

 out question or doubt, and by employing such 

 language that these laws can be expressed in the 

 simplest and briefest form, they are led to think 

 and believe as if these laws were necessarily and 

 inevitably what they are. Some mathematicians 

 indeed have maintained that the highest laws of 

 nature with which we are acquainted, the laws 

 of motion and the law of universal gravitation, 

 are not only necessarily true, but are even self- 

 evident and certain ti priori, like the truths of 

 geometry. And though the mathematical culti- 

 vator of the science of mechanics may not adopt 

 this as his speculative opinion, he may still be so 

 far influenced by the tendency from which it 

 springs, that he may rest in the mechanical laws 

 of the universe as ultimate and all-sufficient 

 principles, without seeing in them any evidence 

 of their having been selected and ordained, and 

 thus without ascending from the contemplation 

 of the world to the thought of an Intelligent 

 Ruler. He may thus substitute for the Deity 

 certain axioms and first principles, as the cause 

 of all. And the follower of Newton may run 

 into the error with which he is sometimes 

 charged, of thrusting some mechanic cause into 

 the place of God, if he do not raise his views, as 

 his master did, to some higher cause, to some 

 source of all forces, laws, and principles. 



