Let any one patiently examine their much talked of argument from design, and he will be satisfied that these are no idle charges.  That argument has for its ground-work beggarly assumptions and for its main pillar, reasoning no less beggarly.  Nature must have had a cause, because it evidently is an effect.  The cause of Nature must have been one God; because two Gods, or two million Gods, could not have agreed to cause it.  That cause must be omnipotent, wise, and good, because all things are double one against another, and He has left nothing imperfect.  Men make watches, build ships or houses, out of pre-existing metals, wood, hemp, bricks, mortar, and other materials, therefore God made nature out of no materials at all.  Unassisted nature cannot produce the phenomena we behold, therefore such phenomena clearly prove there is something supernatural.  Not to believe in a God who designed Nature, is to close both ears and eyes against evidence, therefore Atheists are wilfully deaf and obstinately blind.

These are samples of the flimsy stuff, our teachers of what nobody knows, would palm upon us as argument for, yea demonstration of, the Being and Attributes of God.

Design, said Shelley, must be proved before a designer can be inferred—­the matter in controversy, is the existence of design in the universe, and it is not permitted to assume the contested premises and thence infer the matter in dispute.  Insidiously to employ the words contrivance, design and adaptation, before these circumstances are apparent in the universe, thence justly inferring a contriver, is a popular sophism against which it behoves us to be watchful.

To assert that motion is an attribute of mind, that matter is inert, that every combination is the result of intelligence, is also an assumption of the matter in dispute.

Why do we admit design in any machine of human contrivance? simply because innumerable instances of machines having been constructed by human art are present to our mind—­because we are acquainted with persons who could construct such machines; but if having no previous knowledge of any artificial contrivance, we had accidently found a watch upon the ground, we should have been justified in concluding that it was a thing of nature, that it was a combination of matter with whose cause we were unacquainted, and that any attempt to account for the origin of its existence would be equally presumptuous and unsatisfactory. [64:1]

The acuteness and, accuracy of this reasoning can only be disputed by persons wedded to system, who either lack capacity to understand what is advanced in opposition to it, or,

          Being convinced against their will,
          Are of the same opinion still.