iritual optics? No doubt
you will assert, that the truth of the present religious
system may be proved by a long connected chain of
demonstrative arguments. But if I might be allowed, without
offence, to give my opinion in this matter, as far as you
are concerned, I should say, that such an assertion is in
you unbecoming, as well as the conduct you observe in
consequence unjust and imprudent. The assertion is in you
unbecoming, because, whatever you may think, the question,
whether there was ever a divine revelation given, or a
miracle wrought, or whether, supposing such things done,
they can be proved to the conviction of a rational
unprejudiced man, by moral evidence, and human testimony,
requires more learning and judgment than you are possessed
of, to determine with any precision. It requires, indeed,
the greatest and most universal skill and knowledge in
nature and her philosophy, which has not come to your share,
as appears from your writings, where, as may easily be
perceived, you retail all that little you have pickt up. The
more knowledge a man has, he will always be the less
assuming; and a positive stiffness, especially in
commonly-received opinions, is a certain sign and constant
attendant of ignorance. Socrates, the wisest man among the
wisest people, after all his researches declared, that all
that he knew was, that he knew nothing. Cicero, the greatest
master of reason that ever lived, was a professed academic
or sceptist. And a learned and virtuous modern, whom I
forbear to name, in a letter to an intimate friend,
confessed, that the more he thought, he found the more
reason to doubt, and had always been more successful in
discovering what was false, than what was true. Those
illustrious three, learned, virtuous, and lovers of their
country, to whom it would be difficult, perhaps impossible,
to add a fourth, were all sentimental unbelievers, and all
at the same time inculcated a reverence and regard to the
established religions of their respective countries. Nay,
all sentimental unbelievers, had they not been provoked by
the ill-judged bigotry of their adversaries, would have
adhered unanimously to the same maxims. If their unbelief
proceeds from a consciousness of the weakness and limited
state of the human understanding, the constant result of
true learning and philosophy, they will be the more firmly
convinced of the great utility and absolute necessity of a
public form of worship, and a religio