Nothing can shake the solidity of this reasoning, so short, so clear, so decisive; except we assert, that these subjects exceed all human capacity, and that our common measures of truth and falsehood are not applicable to them; a topic which I have all along insisted on, but which you have, from the beginning, rejected with scorn and indignation.
But I will be contented to retire still from this entrenchment, for I deny that you can ever force me in it.

I will allow, that pain or misery in man is compatible with infinite power and goodness in the Deity, even in your sense of these attributes: What are you advanced by all these concessions?
A mere possible compatibility is not sufficient.

You must prove these pure, unmixed, and uncontrollable attributes from the present mixed and confused phenomena, and from these alone.

A hopeful undertaking! Were the phenomena ever so pure and unmixed, yet being finite, they would be insufficient for that purpose.

How much more, where they are also so jarring and discordant! Here, CLEANTHES, I find myself at ease in my argument.