Newton himself, in his Theistical character, wrote and talked as though
most blissfully ignorant of that rule. The passages given above from his
'Principia' palpably violate it. But Theists, however learned, pay
little regard to any rules of philosophising, which put in peril their
fundamental crotchet. If they did, Atheism would need no apologist, and
Theism have no defenders; for Theism, in all its varieties, presupposes
a supernatural Causer of what experience pronounces natural effects.
The Author is aware that 'Natural Theologians' seek to justify their
rebellion against the rules of philosophising, to which the reader's
attention has been specially directed, by appealing to (what they call)
evidences of design in the universal fabric. But though they think so
highly of the design argument, it is not the less true that that
argument rests on mere assumption of a disputed fact; that even though
it were proved the universe was designed, still whether designed by one
God, two Gods, or two million of Gods, would be unshown; and that Paley,
'the most famous of natural Theologians'--Paley, who wrote as never man
wrote before on the design question, has been satisfactorily refuted _in
his own words_.
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