If even it could be demonstrated that there is a super-human Being, it cannot be proper to clothe Him in the noblest human attributes—­still less can it be justifiable in pigmies, such as we are, to invest Him with odious attributes belonging only to despots ruling over slaves.  Besides, how can we imagine a God, who is ’totally destitute of body and of corporeal figure,’ to have any kind of substance?  Earthly emperors we know to be substantial and common-place sort of beings enough, but is it not sheer abuse of reason to argue as though the character of God were at all analogous to theirs; or rather, is it not shocking abuse of our reasoning facilities to employ them at all about a Being whose existence, if we really have an existence, is perfectly enigmatical, and allowed to be so by those very men who pretend to explain its character and attributes?  We find no less a sage than Newton explicitly declaring as incontestible truth, that God exists necessarily—­that the same necessity obliges him to exist always and everywhere—­that he is all eyes, all ears, all brains, all arms, all feeling, all intelligence, all action—­that he exists in a mode by no means corporeal, an yet this same sage, in the self-same paragraph, acknowledges God is totally unknown to us.

Now, we should like to be informed by what reasonable right Newton could pen a long string of ‘incontestible truths,’ such as are here selected from his writings, with respect to a Being of whom, by his own confession, he had not a particle of knowledge.  Surely it is not the part of a wise man to write about that which is ‘totally unknown’ to him, and yet that is precisely what Newton did, when he wrote concerning God.

So much for the Theism of Europe’s chief religious philosopher.  Turn we now to the Theism of Dr. Samuel Clarke.

He wrote a book about the being and attributes of God, in which he endeavoured to establish, first, that ’something has existed from all eternity;’ second, that ’there has existed from eternity some one unchangeable and independent Being;’ third, that ’such unchangeable and independent Being, which has existed from all eternity, without any external cause of its existence, must be necessarily existent;’ fourth, that ’what is the substance or essence of that Being, which is necessarily existing, or self-existent, we have no idea—­neither is it possible for us to comprehend it;’ fifth, that ’the self-existent Being must of necessity be eternal as well as infinite and omnipresent;’ sixth, that ’He must be one, and as he is the self-existent and original cause of all things, must be intelligent;’ seventh, that ’God is not a necessary agent, but a Being endowed with liberty and choice;’ eighth, that ’God is infinite in power, infinite in wisdom, and, as He is supreme cause of all things, must of necessity be a Being infinitely just, truthful, and good—­thus comprising within himself all such moral perfections as becomes the supreme governor and judge of the world.’