’Tis in vain to pretend, that a being of all perfections can be happy in himself, in the consciousness of those perfections, whilst he does no good to any thing; in the reflexive idea of his possessing all excellency, whilst he exerts no tittle of any one. This is the picture of a being quite dissonant to that of the All-good. And as the Druids would, without difficulty, judge, that there must needs be one, only, self-originated first being, the origin of all things: so they would see the necessity of admitting one or more eternal beings, or emanations from that first being, in a manner quite distinct from creation. That there ever was one eternal, self-existent, unoriginated being, is the very first and most necessary truth, which the human mind can possibly, by contemplation and ratiocination, obtain. Still by considering the matter intimately, they would find it impossible to conceive, that there should ever be a time, when there was but one being in the universe, which we call the first and self-originated being, possessing in himself all possible perfections, and remaining for endless myriads of ages, torpid, unactive, solitary, useless. This is a notion so abhorrent to reason, so contrary to the nature of goodness, so absolutely absurd, that we may as well imagine this great being altogether absent, and that there was no being at all. This all the philosophers were sensible of, for good unexercis’d, that always lay dormant, never was put into act, is no goodness; it may as well be supposed absent, and even that there was no God. To imagine that God could be asleep all this while, shocks the mind, therefore it casts about, to remedy this great paradox. Now it cannot be said of any part of creation, or of the whole, that God always did good to any created being or beings; for these are not, cannot be commensurate in time with his own being. Count backward never so long for the beginning of things, still there was a time prior to this beginning of things; for eternal creation is an equal absurdity with an eternal absence of any being: where no part is necessary, to affirm the whole is a necessarily and self-existing being, is a mere portent of reason. So we see, in every light, an absolute necessity of admitting a being or beings coeval with the supreme and self-originated being, distinct from any creation, and which must needs flow from the first being, the cause of all existence. For two self-originated beings is as much an absurdity as any of the preceding.