The causes, therefore, must be resembling.
I was from the beginning scandalised, I must own, with this resemblance, which is asserted, between the Deity and human creatures; and must conceive it to imply such a degradation of the Supreme Being as no sound Theist could endure.

With your assistance, therefore, DEMEA, I shall endeavour to defend what you justly call the adorable mysteriousness of the Divine Nature, and shall refute this reasoning of CLEANTHES, provided he allows that I have made a fair representation of it.
When CLEANTHES had assented, PHILO, after a short pause, proceeded in the following manner.
That all inferences, CLEANTHES, concerning fact, are founded on experience; and that all experimental reasonings are founded on the supposition that similar causes prove similar effects, and similar effects similar causes; I shall not at present much dispute with you.

But observe, I entreat you, with what extreme caution all just reasoners proceed in the transferring of experiments to similar cases.

Unless the cases be exactly similar, they repose no perfect confidence in applying their past observation to any particular phenomenon.

Every alteration of circumstances occasions a doubt concerning the event; and it requires new experiments to prove certainly, that the new circumstances are of no moment or importance.