Our ‘sophists in surplices,’ who can no otherwise bolster up their supernatural system than by outraging all such rules of philosophising as forbid us to choose the greater of two difficulties, or to multiply causes without necessity, are precisely the men to explain everything.  But unfortunately their explanations do for the most part stand more in need of explanation than the thing explained.  Thus they explain the origin of matter by reference to an occult, immense, and immensely mysterious phantasm without body, parts or passions, who sees though not to be seen, hears though not to be heard, feels though not to be felt, moves though not to be moved, knows though not to be known, and in short, does everything, though not to be done by anything.  Well might Godwin say the rage of accounting for what, like immortal Gibbs, is obviously unaccountable, so common among ‘philosophers’ of this stamp, has brought philosophy itself into discredit.

There is an argument against the notion of a Supernatural Causer which the Author of this Apology does not remember to have met with, but which he considers an argument of great force—­it is this.  Cause means change, and as there manifestly could not be change before there was anything to change, to conceive the universe caused is impossible.

That the sense here attached to the word cause is not a novel one every reader knows who has seen an elaborate and ably written article by Mr. G.H.  Lewes, on ‘Spinoza’s Life and Works,’ [68:1] where effect is defined as cause realised, the natura naturans conceived as natura naturata; and cause or causation is defined as simply change.  When, says Mr. Lewis, the change is completed, we name the result effect.  It is only a matter of naming.

These definitions conceded accurate, the conclusion that neither cause nor effect exist, seems inevitable, for change of being is not being itself, any more than attraction is the thing attracted.  One might as philosophically erect attraction into reality and fall down and worship it, as change, which is in very truth, a mere “matter of naming.”  Not so the things changing or changed:  they are real, the prolific parent of all appearance we behold, of all sensation we experience, of all ideas we receive; in short, of all causes and of all effects, which causes and effects, as shown by; Mr. Lewis, are merely notional, for “we call the antecedent cause, and the sequent effect; but these are merely relative conceptions; the sequence itself is antecedent to some subsequent change, and the former antecedent was once only a sequent to its cause, and so on.”  Now, to reconcile with this theory of causation, the notion of an

          Eternal, mighty, causeless God,

may be possible, but the Author of this Apology cannot persuade himself that it is.  His poor faculties are unequal to the mighty task of conceiving the amazing Deity in question, whom Sir Richard Blackmore, in his Ode to Jehovah, describes as sitting on an ’eternal throne’—­