You say, that in denying the power of the spirit to _beget_, you did not mean to question the power to _create_. To limit is to destroy the omnipotency of the Creator; and when we see such a creature as man, presuming to scan His power and determine what He can, or cannot do, the feelings which its profanity would otherwise occasion, are lost in our astonishment at its arrogance and presumption. But you have announced your opinion not only as sanctioned by divine inspiration, but as being according to "the true analogy of reason," and yet, taken with your subsequent explanation, it is enveloped in absurdity. In admitting the power to create, you have destroyed your own argument; for you cannot suppose that there was an individual present in the meeting, so grossly dull as to believe that when the prophecy was accomplished in the birth of our Saviour, it was by the means which your explanation points to; or that it was other than a miraculous intervention of that merciful Being, who in his unlimited power and inscrutable wisdom, has chosen his own way in directing us to a knowledge of those truths which the gospel unfolds. And if we assent to your doctrine in the restricted sense in which you say you intended the word _beget_ to be understood; we must believe there are sexes in spirit, and that it can only be produced by a corporeal union of incorporeal beings. Here is no proof of your ability to draw conclusions from the _analogy of reason_, but it is a striking illustration of the wisdom of the counsel, "not to multiply words without knowledge." A very keen and accurate observer of the foibles and infirmities of man remarks, "it would be well, if people would not lay so much weight on _their own reason_ in matters of religion, as to think every thing impossible and absurd, which they cannot conceive: how often do we contradict the right rules of reason in the whole course of our lives? _Reason_ itself is true and just, but the reason of every particular man is weak and wavering, perpetually swayed and turned by his interests, his passions, and his vices."[6] Footnote 6: Swift.