3&6 THE BEING OF GOD DEMONSTRATED. 



ruftica, he refutes thofe who maintain, that the earth, 

 the common mother of all things, is, as in human 

 creatures, become unfruitful by age. But that the 

 globe fpontaneoufly brought forth men and beafts, 

 can only be believed by thofe who find it not impof- 

 iible, for a garden, by its prolific and plaftic energy, 

 to produce its gardener, and a field the oxen that plow 

 it. 



Who can believe, that the frozen foil of Lapland 

 originally produced its reindeer, or that the aridfandsof 

 the Lybian deferts were the parent of lions, 'tigers, 

 oftriches, and monkies ? 



If then the fuppofition of eternal feminal-eggs be 

 groundlefs, — if this terreftrial ball, which, excepting 

 its living inhabitants, is nought but an enormous lump 

 of lifelefs minerals, deftitute of all means for procrea- 

 ting man or be air. — if, at the fame time, we muft 

 necefTarily admit, that the fucceffion of propagations 

 in the human and the animal races mult have had a 

 beginning — is the production of the ■ firft parents of 

 our race, and the firft beafts of every kind, to be ac- 

 counted for by any mechanifm of the corporeal world ? 

 Is it then abfurd to call in the immediate agency of a 

 higher, of a fuperhuman, a fuperterreftrial being ? 



The formation of the firft men, of the firft animals 

 of every kind, is abfolutely inconceivable upon the 

 notion of a mechanical agency. It is juftly faid by 

 profefTor Feber, that, by the intellect machines have 

 been produced, this we^ know afluredly from expe- 

 rience. But that the intellect could ever be produced 

 by a machine, however artfully conftructed, of this we 

 have not the teftimony of one fingle experience. 



Whoever 



