But God, according to Newton, is neither an object nor a subject, and though, all eyes, all ears, all brains, all arms, all feeling, all intelligence, and all action, he is totally unknown to us.  If Christians allow this to be a true description of the God they worship, we wish to understand how they can love Him so vehemently as they affect to do—­or how they can pay any other than lip homage to so mysterious a Deity?  It is usual for slaves to feign an affection for their masters that they do not, cannot feel—­but that believers in a God should imagine that he who ’searcheth all hearts,’ can be ignorant of what is passing in theirs, or make the tremendous mistake of supposing that their lip homage, or interested expressions of love, are not properly appreciated by the Most High God, and ‘Universal Emperor,’ is indeed very strange.  To overreach or deceive a God who created the heavens and the earth, is altogether beyond the power of puny mortals.  Let not therefore those who bend the knee, while the heart is unbent, and raise the voice of thankful devotion, while all within is frost and barrenness, fancy they have stolen a march upon their Deity; for surely if the lord liveth, he judgeth rightly of these things.  But it were vain to expect that those who think God is related to his creatures as a despot is related to his slaves, will hope to please that God by aught save paltry, cringing, and dishonestly despicable practices.  Yet, no other than a despotic God has the great Newton taught us to adore—­no other than mere slaves of such a God, has he taught us to deem ourselves.  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.’

These are the leading dogmas contained in Clarke’s book—­and as they are deemed invincible by a respectable, though not very numerous, section of Theists, we will briefly examine the more important of them.