ry weapons which are supplied by an Atheistical
philosophy. As a succinct presentation of the views of this school, we
select the "_Theological Institutes_" of R. Watson.

[Footnote 356: Ellis, Leland, Locke, and Horsley, whose writings are
extensively quoted in Watson's "Institutes of Theology" (reprinted by
Carlton & Lanahan, New York).]

1st. The invalidity of "_the principle of causality_" is asserted by
this author. "We allow that the argument which proves that the _effects_
with which we are surrounded have been _caused_, and thus leads us up
through a chain of subordinate causes to one First Cause, has a
simplicity, an obviousness, and a force which, when we are previously
furnished with the idea of God, makes it, at first sight, difficult to
conceive that men, under any degree of cultivation, should be inadequate
to it; yet if ever the human mind commenced such an inquiry at all, it
is highly probable that it would rest in the notion of an _eternal
succession of causes and effects_, rather than acquire the ideas of
creation, in the proper sense, and of a Supreme Creator."[357] "We feel
that our reason rests with full satisfaction in the doctrine that all
things are created by one eternal and self-existent Being; but the Greek
philosophers held that matter was eternally co-existent with God. This
was the opinion of Plato, who has been called the Moses of
philosophy."[358]

For a defense of "the principle of causality" we must refer the reader
to our remarks on the philosophy of Comte. We shall now only remark on
one or two peculiarities in the above statement which betray an utter
misapprehension of the nature of the argument. We need scarcely direct
attention to the unfortunate and, indeed, absurd phrase, "an eternal
succession of causes and effects." An "eternal succession" is a
_contradictio in adjecto_, and as such inconceivable and unthinkable. No
human mind can "rest" in any such thing, because an eternal succession
is no rest at all. All "succession" is finite and temporal, capable of
numeration, and therefore can not be eternal.[359] Again, in attaining
the conception of a First Cause the human mind does not pass up "through
a chain of subordinate causes," either definite or indefinite, "to one
First Cause."

[Footnote 357: Watson's "Institutes of Theology," vol. i. p. 273.]

[Footnote 358: Id., ib., vol. i. p. 21.]

[Footnote 359: See _ante_, pp. 181, 182, ch. v.]

Let us re-state the principle o