It may without injustice be affirmed, that the sincerest and strongest believers in this mysterious Deity, are often tormented by doubts, and, if candid, must own they believe in the existence of many things with a feeling much closer allied to certainty than they do in the reality of their ‘Great First Cause, least understood.’  No man can be so fully and perfectly satisfied there is a God in heaven as the Author of this Apology cannot but be of his own existence on earth.  No man’s faith in the imaginary is ever half so strong as his belief in the visible and tangible.

But few among professional mystifiers will admit this, obviously true as it is.  Some have done so.  Baxter, of pious memory, to wit, who said, ’I am not so foolish as to pretend my certainty be greater than it is, because it is dishonour to be less certain, nor will I by shame be kept from confessing those infirmities which those have as much as I, who hypocritically reproach with them. My certainty that I am a man is before my certainty that there is a God.’

So candid was Richard Baxter, and so candid are not the most part of our priests, who would fain have us think they have no more, and we ought to have no more, doubt about God’s existence than our own.  Nevertheless, they write abundance of books to convince us ‘God is,’ though they never penned a line in order to convince us, we actually are, and that to disbelieve we are is a ‘deadly sin.’

Could God be known, could his existence be made ’palpable to feeling as to sight,’ as unquestionably is the existence of matter, there would be no need of ‘Demonstrations of the existence of God,’ no need of arguments a priori or a posteriori to establish that existence.  Saint John was right; ‘No man hath seen God at any time,’ to which ’open confession’ he might truly have added, ‘none ever will,’ for the unreal is always unseeable.  Yet have ‘mystery men’ with shameless and most insolent pertinacity asserted the existence of God while denying the existence of matter.

Define your terms, said Locke.  Atheists do so, and where necessary insist upon others following the philosophic example.  On this account they are ‘ugly customers’ to Priests, who, with exceptions, much dislike being called upon to explain their idealess language.  Ask one to define the word God and you stagger him.  If he do not fly into a passion deem yourself fortunate, but as to an intelligible definition, look for nothing of the sort.  He can’t furnish such definition however disposed to do so.  The incomprehensible is not to be defined.  It is difficult to give an intelligible account of an ‘Immense Being’ confessedly mysterious, and about whom his worshippers admit they only know, they know nothing, except that

                              ’He is good,
          And that themselves are blind.’