Hor. I never said that I believed every thing that is in them, in a literal sense. But why should you believe miracles at all?
Cleo. Because I cannot help it: and I promise never to mention the name to you again, if you can show me the bare possibility that man could ever have been produced, brought into the world without miracle. Do you believe there ever was a man who had made himself?
Hor. No: that is a plain contradiction.
Cleo. Then it is manifest the first man must have been made by something; and what I say of man, I may say of all matter and motion in general. The doctrine of Epicurus, that every thing is derived from the concourse and fortuitous jumble of atoms, is monstrous and extravagant beyond all other follies.
Hor. Yet there is no mathematical demonstration against it.
Cleo. Nor is there one to prove, that the sun is not in love with the moon, if one had a mind to advance it; and yet I think it a greater reproach to human understanding to believe either, than it is to believe the most childish stories that are told of fairies and hobgoblins.
Hor. But there is an axiom very little inferior to a mathematical demonstration, ex nihilo nihil fit, that is directly clashing with, and contradicts the creation out of nothing. Do you understand how something can come from nothing?
Cleo. I do not, I confess, any more than I can comprehend eternity, or the Deity itself: but when I cannot comprehend what my reason assures me must necessarily exist, there is no axiom or demonstration clearer to me, than that the fault lies in my want of capacity, the shallowness of my understanding. From the little we know of the sun and stars, their magnitudes, distances, and motion; and what we are more nearly acquainted with, the gross visible parts in the structure of animals and their economy, it is demonstrable, that they are the effects of an intelligent cause, and the contrivance of a Being infinite in wisdom as well as power.
Hor. But let wisdom be as superlative, and power as extensive as it is possible for them to be, still it is impossible to conceive how they should exert themselves, unless they had something to act upon.
Cleo. This is not the only thing which, though it be true, we are not able to conceive: How came the first man to exist? and yet here we are. Heat and moisture are the plain effects from manifest causes, and though they bear a great sway, even in the mineral as well as the animal and vegetable world, yet they cannot produce a sprig of grass without a previous seed.