It is by confounding demonstration erroneously understood in the manner indicated with proof in general that not a few persons have arrived at the conclusion that the existence of God cannot be proved at all, and have deemed preposterous assertions like that of Jacobi, "A God who can be proved is no God, for the ground of proof is necessarily above the thing proved by it," both profound and pious. NOTE XXXVIII., page 285. SOME _A PRIORI_ ARGUMENTS. I have treated of Clarke's argument in the 'Encyc. Brit.' art. "Samuel Clarke." The demonstration of Dr Fiddes is contained in his 'Theologia Speculativa, or a Body of Divinity,' 2 vols., 1718-20. It consists of six propositions: 1. Something does now exist; 2. Something has existed eternally; 3. Something has been eternally self-existent; 4. What is self-existent must have all the perfections that exist anywhere or in any subject; 5. What is self-existent must have all possible perfections, and every perfection, in an infinite measure; 6. What has all possible perfections in an infinite measure is God. He proves his fourth proposition thus: "Since nothing can arise out of nothing, and since there can be no perfection but what has some subject of inherence, every perfection must have been eternally somewhere or other, or in one subject or other, into which it must be ultimately resolved, or else it could never have been at all; without admitting, what of all things we are the best able to conceive, an infinite progression of efficient causes--that is, an infinite series of beings derived one from another, without a beginning or any original cause at the head of the series. So that whatever perfections we observe in any being must have been originally and eternally in the self-existent being." On behalf of his fifth proposition he advances two arguments: 1. "All properties essentially follow the nature and condition of the subject, and must be commensurate to it. For this reason we say that wisdom, power, and goodness being attributes of an infinite subject, or one which is the substratum of one _infinite_ attribute, these and all the other perfections belonging to it must be infinite also. Otherwise the same subject, considered as a subject, would be infinite in one respect, and yet finite in another; which, if it be not a contradiction, seems to border so near upon one that we cannot comprehend the possibility of it." 2. "A self-existent being as the subject of any perfection cannot limit itself; because it must necessarily have existed from all eternity what it is, and have been the same in all properties essentially inherent in it, antecedently to any act or volition of its own. Nor can such a being be limited by anything external to it; for, besides that self-existence necessarily implies independence, properties which are essential to any subject can admit of no increase or diminution or the least imaginable change, without destroying the essence itself of the subject. Nor yet can it