The 'Demonstration of the Existence of God against Atheists,' by the Rev. Colin Campbell, Minister of the Parish of Ardchattan, 1667-1726, has been recently printed for private circulation from a MS. now deposited in the library of Edinburgh University. The editor has added to it a learned and admirable appendix. Mr Campbell's manner of proving that there is one, and but one, infinite Being, is as follows: "As everything which hath a beginning forces confession of one who hath none--because to produce is an action, and must presuppose an actor,--by the same force of reason, we must confess that whatever is limited, or made of such and such a limited nature, is limited by something which did limit it to be such a thing, and no other. For limit is an action, and confesseth an actor. So that there must be a being anterior to all limited beings, and, consequently, some being that is not at all limited, to evite the absurd progress of running infinitely upwards unlimited beings, without a single limiter. Now, an unlimited being is the same as to say an infinite being. And so, by the force of reason, we have a being which is eternal, which is infinite. There can be but one infinite, because, were there two or more, the one would limit the other; and so the infinite would be finite, the unlimited would be limited. Therefore, the unlimited, or infinite, must be one only; and that one purely single and uncompounded, else every part of the compound would limit the other parts, so that all the parts would be limited. And a whole whose parts are limited must be limited in the whole, it being impossible that a compound or conjunction of finites can, by addition, produce an infinite, unless you imagine this complex whole to consist partly of finites, and also of some infinite. But the one infinite part, if infinite, cannot leave place for any other finite to make it up, it being itself unlimited and infinite; and such an addition would speak it limited by the part which was added. And a thousand like absurdities would follow."
Wollaston's attempted demonstration is contained in the fifth section of his 'Religion of Nature Delineated' (1725). This is a common book, and the mere reference to it must suffice.
