He wrote a book about the being and attributes of God, in which he endeavoured to establish, first, that 'something has existed from all eternity;' second, that 'there has existed from eternity some one unchangeable and independent Being;' third, that 'such unchangeable and independent Being, which has existed from all eternity, without any external cause of its existence, must be necessarily existent;' fourth, that 'what is the substance or essence of that Being, which is necessarily existing, or self-existent, we have no idea--neither is it possible for us to comprehend it;' fifth, that 'the self-existent Being must of necessity be eternal as well as infinite and omnipresent;' sixth, that 'He must be one, and as he is the self-existent and original cause of all things, must be intelligent;' seventh, that 'God is not a necessary agent, but a Being endowed with liberty and choice;' eighth, that 'God is infinite in power, infinite in wisdom, and, as He is supreme cause of all things, must of necessity be a Being infinitely just, truthful, and good--thus comprising within himself all such moral perfections as becomes the supreme governor and judge of the world.' These are the leading dogma contained in Clarke's book--and as they are deemed invincible by a respectable, though not very numerous, section of Theists, we will briefly examine the more important important of them. The dogma that _something has existed from all eternity_, as already shown, is perfectly intelligible, and may defy contradiction--but the real difficulty is to satisfactorily determine _what that something is_. Matter exists, and as no one can even imagine its non-existence or annihilation, the Materialist infers _that_ must be the eternal something. Newton as well as Clark thought the everlasting Being destitute of body, and consequently without 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