being.  There is indeed an opposition of pains and pleasures in the feelings of sensible creatures:  but are not all the operations of Nature carried on by an opposition of principles, of hot and cold, moist and dry, light and heavy?  The true conclusion is, that the original Source of all things is entirely indifferent to all these principles; and has no more regard to good above ill, than to heat above cold, or to drought above moisture, or to light above heavy.

There may four hypotheses be framed concerning the first causes of the universe:  that they are endowed with perfect goodness; that they have perfect malice; that they are opposite, and have both goodness and malice; that they have neither goodness nor malice.  Mixed phenomena can never prove the two former unmixed principles; and the uniformity and steadiness of general laws seem to oppose the third.  The fourth, therefore, seems by far the most probable.

What I have said concerning natural evil will apply to moral, with little or no variation; and we have no more reason to infer, that the rectitude of the Supreme Being resembles human rectitude, than that his benevolence resembles the human.  Nay, it will be thought, that we have still greater cause to exclude from him moral sentiments, such as we feel them; since moral evil, in the opinion of many, is much more predominant above moral good than natural evil above natural good.

But even though this should not be allowed, and though the virtue which is in mankind should be acknowledged much superior to the vice, yet so long as there is any vice at all in the universe, it will very much puzzle you Anthropomorphites, how to account for it.  You must assign a cause for it, without having recourse to the first cause.  But as every effect must have a cause, and that cause another, you must either carry on the progression in infinitum, or rest on that original principle, who is the ultimate cause of all things...

Hold! hold! cried DEMEA:  Whither does your imagination hurry you?  I joined in alliance with you, in order to prove the incomprehensible nature of the Divine Being, and refute the principles of cleanthes, who would measure every thing by human rule and standard.  But I now find you running into all the topics of the greatest libertines and infidels, and betraying that holy cause which you seemingly espoused.  Are you secretly, then, a more dangerous enemy than cleanthes himself?

And are you so late in perceiving it? replied cleanthes.  Believe me, DEMEA, your friend Philo, from the beginning, has been amusing himself at both our expense; and it must be confessed, that the injudicious reasoning of our vulgar theology has given him but too just a handle of ridicule.  The total infirmity of human reason, the absolute incomprehensibility of the Divine Nature, the great and universal misery, and still greater wickedness of men; these are strange topics, surely, to be so fondly cherished by orthodox divines and doctors.  In ages of stupidity and ignorance, indeed, these principles may safely be espoused; and perhaps no views of things are more proper to promote superstition, than such as encourage the blind amazement, the diffidence, and melancholy of mankind.  But at present...