These are the controversies concerning
the degrees of any quality or circumstance. Men may argue to all
eternity, whether H/ANNIBAL\ be a great, or a very great, or a
superlatively great man, what degree of beauty C/LEOPATRA\
possessed, what epithet of praise L/IVY\ or T/HUCYDIDES\ is
entitled to, without bringing the controversy to any
determination. The disputants may here agree in their sense, and
differ in the terms, or vice versa; yet never be able to define
their terms, so as to enter into each other's meaning: Because
the degrees of these qualities are not, like quantity or number,
susceptible of any exact mensuration,28 which may be the standard
in the controversy. That the dispute concerning Theism is of this
nature, and consequently is merely verbal, or perhaps, if
possible, still more incurably ambiguous, will appear upon the
slightest inquiry. I ask the Theist, if he does not allow, that
there is a great and immeasurable, because incomprehensible
difference between the human and the divine mind: The more pious
he is, the more readily will he assent to the affirmative, and
the more will he be disposed to magnify the difference: He will
even assert, that the difference is of a nature which cannot be
too much magnified. I next turn to the Atheist, who, I assert, is
only nominally so, and can never possibly be in earnest; and I
ask him, whether, from the coherence and apparent sympathy in all
the parts of this world, there be not a certain degree of analogy
among all the operations of Nature, in every situation and in
every age; whether the rotting of a turnip, the generation of an
animal, and the structure of human thought, be not energies that
probably bear some remote analogy to each other: It is impossible
he can deny it: He will readily acknowledge it.
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