A particular providence must indeed prove one of these
two principles, either that God was imperfect in his design, or that
inert matter is inimical to the properties of God. If that wished for
interposition of the Deity is put off to a future existence, I cannot
help observing, that future day has been already a long while waited
for in vain, and any delay destroys some one attribute or other of the
Deity. He wants justice, or he wants the power, or the will to do good
and be just. That a future state of rewards and punishments may however
exist without a Deity, you, Dr. Priestley, allow to be no impossibility.
It may indeed be argued with apparent justness, that a principle of
reviviscence may as well be admitted as a principle of production in
the first instance: and as to rewards and punishments, judgement may be
rendered, as well as now, by Beings less than Deities. For my part I
firmly wish for such a future state, and though I cannot firmly believe
it, I am resolved to live as if such a state were to ensue. This seems,
I own, like doubting, and doubting may be said to be a miserable state
of anxiety. "Better be confident than unhinged; better confide in
ignorance than have no fixed system." So it may be argued; but I think
the result will be as people feel. Those who do not feel bold enough,
to be satisfied with their own thoughts, may abandon them and adopt the
thoughts of others. For my part I am content with my own; and not the
less so because they do not end in certainty upon matters, from the
nature of them, beyond the complete reach of human intelligence.
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