that when one fasts
he must anoint his head and wash his face.**

* Dr. Priestly has discarded his wig since he went to
America, and wears his own hair. Editor A. J. Reveiw.

** St. Matthew, Chapter VI. verses 16 and 17.

8. Because, finally, a dispute to one having nothing else to do would be
a gratification, while to me, who can employ my time better, it would be
an absolute loss.

I shall not then, reverend sir, make you my confessor in matters of
religion, but I will disclose to you my opinion, as a man of letters, on
the composition of your book. Having in former days, read many works of
theology, I was curious to learn whether by any chemical process you had
discovered real beings in that world of invisibles. Unfortunately, I am
obliged to declare to the public, which, according to your expression,
p. 19, "hopes to be instructed, to be led into truth, and not into error
by me," that I have not found in your book a single new argument,
but the mere repetition of what is told over and over in thousands of
volumes, the whole fruit of which has been to procure for their authors
a cursory mention in the dictionary of heresies. You everywhere lay down
that as proved which remains to be proved; with this peculiarity,
that, as Gibbon says, firing away your double battery against those who
believe too much, and those who believe too little, you hold out your
own peculiar sensations, as to the precise criterion of truth; so that
we must all be just of your size in order to pass the gate of that
New Jerusalem which you are building. After this, your reputation as
a divine might have become problematical with me; but recollecting the
principle of the association of ideas so well developed by Locke, whom
you hold in estimation, and whom, for that reason I am happy to cite to
you, although to him I owe that pernicious use of my understanding which
makes me disbelieve what I do not comprehend--I perceive why the public
having originally attached the idea of talents to the name of Mr.
Priestly, doctor in chemistry, continued by habit to associate it with
the name of Mr. Priestly, doctor in divinity; which, however, is not the
same thing: an association of ideas the more vicious as it is liable
to be moved inversely.* Happily you have yourself raised a bar of
separation between your admirers, by advising us in the first page
of your preface, that your present book is especially destined for
believers. To coope