And I must confess, that you have now fallen upon a subject worthy of your noble spirit of opposition and controversy.

If you can make out the present point, and prove mankind to be unhappy or corrupted, there is an end at once of all religion.

For to what purpose establish the natural attributes of the Deity, while the moral are still doubtful and uncertain?
You take umbrage very easily, replied DEMEA, at opinions the most innocent, and the most generally received, even amongst the religious and devout themselves: and nothing can be more surprising than to find a topic like this, concerning the wickedness and misery of man, charged with no less than Atheism and profaneness.

Have not all pious divines and preachers, who have indulged their rhetoric on so fertile a subject; have they not easily, I say, given a solution of any difficulties which may attend it?
This world is but a point in comparison of the universe; this life but a moment in comparison of eternity.

The present evil phenomena, therefore, are rectified in other regions, and in some future period of existence.