nothing but an Antinomian Plot against real righteousness, and, as it were, a secret confederacy with the Devil. The second, of those who turn that into matter of mere notion and opinion, dispute and controversy, which was designed by God only as a contrivance, machine, or engine to bring men effectually to a holy and godly life.”[479] [Sidenote: CUDWORTH.] The fifth chapter is devoted to “a particular confutation of all the atheistic grounds,” which confutation covers 270 folio pages. The two principal objections which he combats are, that, either men have no idea of God at all, or else, none but such as is compounded and made up of impossible and contradictory notions; whence these Atheists would infer Him to be an inconceivable nothing, and that, as nothing could come from nothing, it may be concluded, that whatever substantially or really is, was from all eternity of itself unmade, or uncreated by any Deity. The answering of these objections--in a course of argument which combines great learning with metaphysical acuteness--leads Cudworth to introduce proofs of the Divine existence drawn from final causes, as in the subjoined passage, which is quoted as one of the most familiar and popular forms of reasoning to be found in this recondite treatise:--“It is no more possible, that the fortuitous motion of dead and senseless matter, should ever from itself be taught and necessitated to produce such an orderly and regular system as the frame of this whole world is, together with the bodies of animals, and constantly to continue the same; than that a man perfectly illiterate and neither able to write nor read, taking up a pen into his hand, and making all manner of scrawls, with ink upon paper, should at length be taught and necessitated by the thing itself, to write a whole quire of paper together, with such characters, as being decyphered by a certain key, would all prove coherent philosophic sense.” Or to take another instance:--“This is no more possible than that ten or a dozen persons, altogether unskilled in music, having several instruments given them, and striking the strings or keys thereof, any how as it happened, should, after some time of discord and jarring, at length be taught and necessitated, to fall into most exquisite harmony, and continue the same uninterruptedly for several hours together.”[480] Cudworth directed his studies chiefly to the foundations of religion and morality. Neither from his published works, nor, it would appear, from his unpublished MSS., in the British Museum, can any definite system of Biblical doctrine be gathered. The general colouring of his theological views, however, may be inferred from the very title of one of his printed treatises: “_Deus Justificatus_; or the Divine Goodness vindicated and cleared against the assertors of absolute and inconditionate Reprobation.” [Sidenote: CAMBRIDGE.--CRITICS.]