An intelligent being of such vast power and capacity as is necessary to produce the universe, or, to speak in the language of ancient philosophy, so prodigious an animal exceeds all analogy, and even comprehension.
But further, CLEANTHES: men are mortal, and renew their species by generation; and this is common to all living creatures.

The two great sexes of male and female, says MILTON, animate the world.

Why must this circumstance, so universal, so essential, be excluded from those numerous and limited deities?
Behold, then, the theogony of ancient times brought back upon us.
And why not become a perfect Anthropomorphite?
Why not assert the deity or deities to be corporeal, and to have eyes, a nose, mouth, ears, &c.?
EPICURUS maintained, that no man had ever seen reason but in a human figure; therefore the gods must have a human figure.

And this argument, which is deservedly so much ridiculed by CICERO, becomes, according to you, solid and philosophical.
In a word, CLEANTHES, a man who follows your hypothesis is able perhaps to assert, or conjecture, that the universe, sometime, arose from something like design: but beyond that position he cannot ascertain one single circumstance; and is left afterwards to fix every point of his theology by the utmost license of fancy and hypothesis.

This world, for aught he knows, is very faulty and imperfect, compared to a superior standard; and was only the first rude essay of some infant deity, who afterwards abandoned it, ashamed of his lame performance: it is the work only of some dependent, inferior deity; and is the object of derision to his superiors: it is the production of old age and dotage in some superannuated deity; and ever since his death, has run on at adventures, from the first impulse and active force which it received from him.