86 NATURAL THEOLOGY. 



applied to the Deity, it has not been controverted 

 by those who acknowledge a Deity at all. Most 

 assuredly, there never was a time in which no- 

 thing existed, because that condition must have 

 continued. The universal blank must have re- 

 mained; nothing could rise up out of it; nothing 

 could ever have existed since; nothing could exist 

 now. In strictness, however, we have no concern 

 with duration prior to that of the visible w^orld. 

 Upon this article therefore of theology, it is suffi- 

 cient to know that the contriver necessarily exist- 

 ed before the contrivance. 



"Self-existence" is another negative idea, viz. 

 the negation of a preceding cause, as of a proge- 

 nitor, a maker, an author, a creator.-*^ 



"Necessary existence" means demonstrable ex- 

 istence."' 



"Spirituality" expresses an idea, made up of a 

 negative part, and of a positive part. The nega- 

 tive part consists in the exclusion of some of the 

 known properties of matter, especially of solidity, 

 of the vis inerticB, and of gravitation. The posi- 

 tive part comprises perception, thought, will, power, 

 action, by which last term is meant the origination 



^ Self-existent inc ans, in any intelligible sense, only uncreated, 

 independent, eternal. The ancient doctrine of Self-created, if it 

 goes beyond the mere negative sense, is absolutely unintelligible, 

 or, to use Dr. Clarke's words, "an express contradiction." 



21 Necessary, properly means demonstrable in such a way, that 

 the I ontrary involves a contradiction and is inconceivable. Dr. 

 Paley here uses the word demonstrable per se in this sense ; for 

 which he has the authority of several metaphysical writers. 



