Having explained what is intended by the principles of common sense, the next attempt will be to apply certain of these principles to gain a system of natural religion; meaning by this term that religion which may be gained from the works of the Creator independently of any revealed Word.
In all systems of religion the first article relates to the existence and character of the Deity to be worshiped and obeyed. The first principle of common sense to guide us in this inquiry is this:
Every change has a producing cause.
In the widest sense of the word, cause signifies something as an antecedent, without which a given change will not occur, and with which it will occur. This is the leading idea in every use of this word.
Then there are two classes of causes; the first are necessary or producing causes, and the second occasional causes.
A producing cause is an antecedent which produces a given change.
Occasional causes are those circumstances which are indispensable to the action of producing causes.
Thus, fire applied to powder is the producing cause of an explosion, while the placing of the two together is the occasional cause of it.
The idea of a producing cause is one which probably is gained when we first discover that our own will moves our own limbs and other things around us. When we will to move a thing, and find the intended change follows our volition to move it, then we can not help believing that our own mind produced this change. At the same time we gain the idea of power to produce this change, and the belief also that the thing changed had no power to refrain from the change.
Our only mode of defining the idea of a producing cause, of power and of want of power, is to refer to occasions when, by willing, we cause changes, and thus become conscious of the existence and nature of these ideas by experience.