y think, it would be found
they do not differ in religious opinions, as much as is supposed. I
remember to have heard Dr. Priestley say, that if all England would
candidly examine themselves, and confess, they would find that
Unitarianism was really the religion of all: and I observe a bill is now
depending in parliament for the relief of Anti-Trinitarians. It is too
late in the day for men of sincerity to pretend they believe in the
Platonic mysticisms that three are one, and one is three; and yet that
the one is not three, and the three are not one: to divide mankind by a
single letter into

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But this constitutes the craft, the power, and the profit of the
priests. Sweep away their gossamer fabrics of factitious religion, and
they would catch no more flies. We should all then, like the Quakers,
live without an order of priests, moralize for ourselves, follow the
oracle of conscience, and say nothing about what no man can understand,
nor therefore believe; for I suppose belief to be the assent of the mind
to an intelligible proposition.

It is with great pleasure I can inform you, that Priestley finished the
comparative view of the doctrines of the philosophers of antiquity, and
of Jesus, before his death; and that it was printed soon after. And with
still greater pleasure, that I can have a copy of his work forwarded
from Philadelphia, by a correspondent there, and presented for your
acceptance, by the same mail which carries you this, or very soon after.
The branch of the work which the title announces, is executed with
learning and candor, as was every thing Priestley wrote: but perhaps a
little hastily; for he felt himself pressed by the hand of death. The
Abbe Batteux had, in fact, laid the foundation of this part in his
'Causes Premieres'; with which he has given us the originals of Ocellus
and Timzeus, who first committed the doctrines of Pythagoras to writing:
and Enfield, to whom the Doctor refers, had done it more copiously. But
he has omitted the important branch, which, in your letter of August the
9th, you say you have never seen executed, a comparison of the morality
of the Old Testament with that of the New. And yet, no two things were
ever more unlike. I ought not to have asked him to give it. He dared
not. He would have been eaten alive by his intolerant brethren, the
Cannibal priests. And yet, this was really the most interesting branch
of the work.

Very soon after my let