ordinary operation of cause and effect, lead to temporary or more permanent advantages; whilst the abuse or non-improvement of talents and opportunities will prove detrimental to individuals or states. In the providential administration of the world, according to the best judgment we can form, the means and end are inseparably connected; and therefore when success may be accounted for on ordinary principles, to ascribe it to the direct interposition of heaven is an illogical and unsatisfactory mode of arguing, for if such a proposition were admitted, even truth would be variable and dependent on the ever fluctuating vicissitudes of human affairs, rather than grounded on the impregnable basis of internal and external evidence.
Since, however, this argument has frequently been urged in favour of the claims of Islamism to a divine original, its fallacy
