The other argument, which is founded on a man’s knowledge of his own existence, stands thus.  A man knows not only that he now is, but that once he was not; consequently there must have been a cause.  But our idea of causation is alone derivable from the constant conjunction of objects and the consequent inference of one from the other; and, reasoning experimentally, we can only infer from effects causes exactly adequate to those effects.  But there certainly is a generative power which is effected by certain instruments:  we cannot prove that it is inherent in these instruments; nor is the contrary hypothesis capable of demonstration:  we admit that the generative power is incomprehensible; but to suppose that the same effect is produced by an eternal, omniscient, omnipotent being leaves the cause in the same obscurity, but renders it more incomprehensible.

3d, Testimony.  It is required that testimony should not be contrary to reason.  The testimony that the Deity convinces the senses of men of His existence can only be admitted by us if our mind considers it less probable that these men should have been deceived than that the Deity should have appeared to them.  Our reason can never admit the testimony of men, who not only declare that they were eye-witnesses of miracles, but that the Deity was irrational; for He commanded that He should be believed, He proposed the highest rewards for faith, eternal punishments for disbelief.  We can only command voluntary actions; belief is not an act of volition; the mind is even passive, or involuntarily active; from this it is evident that we have no sufficient testimony, or rather that testimony is insufficient to prove the being of a God.  It has been before shown that it cannot be deduced from reason.  They alone, then, who have been convinced by the evidence of the senses can believe it.

Hence it is evident that, having no proofs from either of the three sources of conviction, the mind CANNOT believe the existence of a creative God:  it is also evident that, as belief is a passion of the mind, no degree of criminality is attachable to disbelief; and that they only are reprehensible who neglect to remove the false medium through which their mind views any subject of discussion.  Every reflecting mind must acknowledge that there is no proof of the existence of a Deity.

God is an hypothesis, and, as such, stands in need of proof:  the onus probandi rests on the theist.  Sir Isaac Newton says:  Hypotheses non fingo, quicquid enim ex phaenomenis non deducitur hypothesis vocanda est, et hypothesis vel metaphysicae, vel physicae, vel qualitatum occultarum, seu mechanicae, in philosophia locum non habent.  To all proofs of the existence of a creative God apply this valuable rule.  We see a variety of bodies possessing a variety of powers:  we merely know their effects; we are in a state of ignorance with respect to their essences and causes.  These Newton calls the phenomena of things; but the