" In a word, (says our
author), "to make use of his own expression, _We find no vestige of
a beginning._ Then this system of successive worlds must have been
eternal." Such is the logic by which, I suppose, I am to be accused of
atheism. Our author might have added, that I have also said--_we see
no prospect of an end_; but what has all this to do with the idea of
eternity? Are we, with our ideas of _time_, (or mere succession), to
measure that of eternity, which never succeeded any thing, and which
will never be succeeded? Are we thus to measure eternity, that boundless
thought, with those physical notions of ours which necessarily limit
both space and time? and, because we see not the beginning of created
things, Are we to conclude that those things which we see have always
been, or been without a cause? Our author would thus, inadvertently
indeed, lead himself into that gulf of irreligion and absurdity into
which, he alleges, I have _boldly plunged_.
In examining this present earth, we find that it must have had its
origin at the bottom of the sea, although our author seems willing to
deny that proposition.
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