A careful and strict enquiry into the modern prevailing notions of that freedom of…

Yea, if once it should be allowed, that Things may come to pass without a Cause, we should not only have no Proof of the Being of God, but we should be without Evidence of the Existence of any Thing whatsoever, but our own immediately present Ideas and Consciousness. For we have no Way to prove any Thing else, but by arguing from Effects to Causes: from the Ideas now immediately in View, we argue other Things not immediately in View: from Sensations now excited in us, we infer the Existence of Things without us, as the Causes of these Sensations: And from the Existence of these Things, we argue other Things, which they depend on, as Effects on Causes. We infer the past Existence of our Selves, or any Thing else, by Memory; only as we argue, that the Ideas, which are now in our Minds, are the Consequences of past Ideas and Sensations. We immediately perceive nothing else but the Ideas which are this Moment extant in our Minds. We perceive or know other Things only by Means of these, as necessarily connected with ⟨p. 45⟩others, and dependent on them. But if Things may be without Causes, all this necessary Connection and Dependence is dissolved, and so all Means of our Knowledge is gone. If there be no Absurdity or Difficulty in supposing one Thing to start out of Non-Existence, into Being, of it self without a Cause; then there is no Absurdity or Difficulty in supposing the same of Millions of Millions. For Nothing, or no Difficulty multiplied, still is Nothing, or no Difficulty: Nothing multiplied by Nothing don't increase the Sum.

And indeed, according to the Hypothesis I am opposing, of the Acts of the Will coming to pass without a Cause, it is the Case in Fact, that Millions of Millions of Events are continually coming into Existence Contingently, without any Cause or Reason why they do so, all over the World, every Day and Hour, thro' all Ages. So it is in a constant Succession, in every moral Agent. This Contingency, this efficient Nothing, this effectual No-Cause, is always ready at Hand, to produce this Sort of Effects, as long as the Agent exists, and as often as he has Occasion.