rate, however, with you, sir, in this judicious
design, I must observe that it is necessary to retrench two passages,
seeing they afford the greatest support to the arguments of unbelievers.

* Mr. Blair, doctor of divinity, and Mr. Black, doctor in
chemistry, met at the coffee house in Edinburg: a new
theological pamphlet written by doctor Priestly was thrown
upon the table, "Really," said Dr. Blair, "this man had
better confine himself to chemistry, for he is absolutely
ignorant in theology:"--"I beg your pardon," answered Dr.
Black, "he is in the right, he is a minister of the gospel,
he ought to adhere to his profession, for in truth he knows
nothing of chemistry."

You say, p. 15, "What is manifestly contrary to natural reason cannot be
received by it;"--and p. 62, "With respect to intellect, men and brute
animals are born in the same state, having the same external senses,
which are the only inlets to all ideas, and consequently the source of
all the knowledge and of all the mental habits they ever acquire."

Now if you admit, with Locke, and with us infidels, that every one has
the right of rejecting whatever is contrary to his natural reason, and
that all our ideas and all our knowledge are acquired only by the inlets
of our external senses; What becomes of the system of revelation, and of
that order of things in times past, which is so contradictory to that
of the time present? unless we consider it as a dream of the human brain
during the state of superstitious ignorance.

With these two single phrases, I could overturn the whole edifice of
your faith. Dread not, however, sir, in me such overflowing zeal. For
the same reason that I have not the frenzy of martyrdom, I have not that
of making proselytes. It becomes those ardent, or rather acrimonious
tempers, who mistake the violence of their sentiments for the enthusiasm
of truth; the ambition of noise and rumor, for the love of glory; and
for the love of their neighbor, the detestation of his opinions, and the
secret desire of dominion.

As for me, who have not received from nature the turbulent qualities of
an apostle, and never sustained in Europe the character of a dissenter,
I am come to America neither to agitate the conscience of men, nor to
form a sect, nor to establish a colony, in which, under the pretext of
religion, I might erect a little empire to myself. I have never been
seen evangelizing my ideas