thout parts, figure, motion,
divisibility, or any other such properties as we find in matter--_ergo_,
they did not believe matter to be the eternal something; but if not
matter, again we ask, what can it be? Of bodilessness or incorporiety no
one, even among those who say their God is incorporeal, pretend to have
an idea. Abady insisted that _the question is not what incorporiety is,
but whether it be?_ Well, we have no objection to parties taking that
position, because there is nothing more easy than to dislodge those who
think fit to do so--for this reason: the advocates of nothing, or
incorporiety, can no more establish by arguments drawn from unquestioned
facts, that incorporiety _is_ than they can clearly show _what_ it is.
It has always struck the author as remarkable that men should so
obstinately refuse to admit the possibility of matter's necessary
existence, while they readily embrace, not only as possibly, but
certainly, true, the paradoxical proposition that a something, having
nothing in common with anything, is necessarily existent. Matter is
everywhere around and about us. We ourselves are matter--all our ideas
are derived _from_ matter--and yet such is the singularly perverse
character of human intellect that, while resolutely denying the
possibility of matter's eternity, an immense number of our race embrace
the incredible proposition that matter was created in time by a
necessarily existing Being, who is without body, parts, passions, or
positive nature!

The second dogma informs us that this always-existing Being is
unchangeable and independent. One unavoidable inference from which is
that Deity is itself immoveable, as well as unconnected with the
universe--for a moveable Being must be a changeable Being, by the very
fact of its motion; while an independent Being must be motiveless, as it
is evident all motives result from our relationship to things eternal;
but an independent Being can have no relations, and consequently must
act without motives. Now, as no intelligent _human_ action can be
imagined without necessary precursors in the shape of motives, reasoning
from analogy, it seems impossible that the unchangeable and independent
Being, Clarke was so sure must ever have existed, could have created the
universe, seeing he could have had no _motive_ or _inducement_ to create
it.

The third dogma may be rated a truism--it being evidently true that a
thing or Being, which has existed from eternity