o do with the
main question? What has my book in common with my person? And how can
you hold any converse with a man of such bad connexions? In the second
place, your invitation, or rather, your summons to me, to point out
the mistakes which I think you have made with respect to my opinions,
suggest to me several observations.

First. You suppose that the public attaches a high importance to your
mistakes and to my opinions: but I cannot act upon a supposition. Am I
not an unbeliever?

Secondly. You say, p. 18, that the public will expect it from me: Where
are the powers by which you make the public speak and act? Is this also
a revelation?

Thirdly. You require me to point out your mistakes. I do not know that I
am under any such obligation: I have not reproached you with them; it
is not, indeed, very correct to ascribe to me, by selection or
indiscriminately, as you have done, all the opinions scattered through
my book, since, having introduced many different persons, I was under
the necessity of making them deliver different sentiments, according to
their different characters. The part which belongs to me is that of a
traveler, resting upon the ruins and meditating on the causes of the
misfortunes of the human race. To be consistent with yourself you ought
to have assigned to me that of the Hottentot or Samoyde savage, who
argues with the Doctors, chap. xxiii, and I should have accepted it; you
have preferred that of the erudite historian, chap. xxii, nor do I look
upon this as a mistake; I discover on the contrary, an insidious design
to engage me in a duel of self-love before the public, wherein you would
excite the exclusive interest of the spectators by supporting the cause
which they approve; while the task which you would impose on me,
would only, in the event of success, be attended with sentiments of
disapprobation. Such is your artful purpose, that, in attacking me
as doubting the existence of Jesus, you might secure to yourself,
by surprise, the favor of every Christian sect, although your own
incredulity in his divine nature is not less subversive of Christianity
than the profane opinion, which does not find in history the proof
required by the English law to establish a fact: to say nothing of
the extraordinary kind of pride assumed in the silent, but palpable,
comparison of yourself to Paul and to Christ, by likening your labors to
theirs as tending to the same object, p. 10, preface. Nevertheless, as