age, instead of waiting ’till our deaths at so many different ages?  He can only finish his argument by allowing that the ways of God are inscrutable to man, that every thing is for the best and refer us to Candide for the rest of his philosophy; nor will he ever resolve the question, “if evil and pain are good and necessary now, why will they not always be so?  Take a view of human existence, and who can even allow, that there is more happiness than misery in the world?  Dr. Priestley thinks to give the turn of the scale to happiness, by making it depend intirely upon health, notwithstanding he says in another place that human sensations are a mass collected from the past, present and future, and as a man grows up the present goes on to bear a less proportion to the other two.  It would indeed be a short but lame way of proving that “happiness is the design of the creation” because health is designed, and sickness is only an exception, not a general rule.”  Many a healthy man has certainly been unhappy, or else had a man better study health than virtue.  If the mill-wright make a poor machine he is a poor workman; God in like manner designing health and introducing sickness is but a poor physician.  In another place Dr. Priestley having considered, that he had asserted that human sensations arise from ideas of the past and future as well as the present, finds himself obliged to alter his notions of happiness, so far as to say that happiness is more intellectual than corporeal.  But it is rather extraordinary to assert at the same time, that happiness is the necessary consequence of health, and that happiness is more from intellectual than corporeal feelings.  Surely health, if any thing, is corporeal.  Another curious fancy about pain and happiness is, that our finite nature not admitting infinite or unlimited happiness we must leave it to the wisdom of the Deity to determine which is best for us (since happiness must be diminished) a little pain to be added to it or somewhat of happiness to be taken away.  It hardly requires the skill of a benevolent Deity to determine which is best for the creatures he has made (and whom he wishes to be as happy as their finite nature will admit) to lessen their degree of happiness or mix therein a proportion of misery.  To conclude he asks, “how it is possible to teach children caution, but by feeling pain?” It is easy to allow in answer, that it might not perhaps be possible in us.  But he is arguing about the benevolence of a Deity.  It was possible, he will allow, in him to have given these children knowledge without pain, at least if he continues to him the attribute he allows of omnipotence.

Next he observes that parents suspend at times their benefits to their offspring, when persuaded they are not for their good; so does the Deity.  But before this argument holds he must therefore say, it is not for the good of man to be made happy now, and that the Deity can be infinitely benevolent without willing either infinite or universal happiness.  Take the argument any way, it must go against his benevolence or his power; and the same observations hold as to his love of justice, whilst he is so tardy in punishing offenders.