Yet, does the difference between the
real case and the imagined case, or the seeming inferiority of the one
to the other, authorise us to say, that the present disposition of the
atmosphere is not amongst the productions or the designs of the Deity?
Does it check the inference which we draw from the confessed beneficence
of the provision? or does it make us cease to admire the contrivance?
The observation which we have exemplified in the single instance of the
rain of heaven may be repeated concerning most of the phenomena of
nature; and the true conclusion to which it leads is this--that to
inquire what the Deity might have done, could have done, or, as we even
sometimes presume to speak, ought to have done, or, in hypothetical
cases, would have done; and to build any propositions upon such
inquiries against evidence of facts, is wholly unwarrantable. It is a
mode of reasoning which will not do in natural history, which will not
do in natural religion, which cannot therefore be applied with safety to
revelation. It may have same foundation in certain speculative a priori
ideas of the divine attributes, but it has none in experience or in
analogy.
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