Is the latter antecedently more probable?--let us
see. First, it is evident that if many are probable, few are more
probable, and one most probable of all. The more possible gods you take
away, the more do impediments diminish; until, that is to say, you
arrive at that One Being, whom we have already proved probable.
Moreover, many must be absolutely united as one; in which case the many
is a gratuitous difficulty, because they may as well be regarded for all
purposes of worship or argument as one God: or the many must have been
in essence more or less disunited; in which case, as a state of any
thing short of pure concord carries in itself the seeds of dissolution,
needs must that one or other of the many (long before any possible
beginnings, as we count beginnings, looking down the past vista of
eternity), would have taken opportunity by such disturbing causes to
become absolute monarch: whether by peaceful persuasion, or hostile
compulsion, or other mode of absorbing disunions, would be indifferent;
if they were not all improbable, as unworthy of the God. Perpetuity of
discord is a thing impossible; every thing short of unity tends to
decomposition. Any how then, given the element of eternity to work in,
a one great Supreme Being was, in the created beginning, an _a priori_
probability. That all other assumptions than that of His true and
eternal Oneness are as false in themselves as they are derogatory to the
rational views of deity, we all now see and believe; but the direct
proofs of this are more strictly matters of revelation than of reason:
albeit reason too can discern their probabilities.
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