of all organized beings--man included--merely from
those principles on which the origin and present appearance of suns and
worlds are explained, must be set down as mere bald assertion, without a
particle of evidence. In other words we should term it _arrant fudge_.'
The perversion at this point is involved in a willful misapplication of
the word 'principles.' I say 'wilful' because, at page 63, I am
_particularly_ careful to distinguish between the principles proper,
Attraction and Repulsion, and those merely resultant _sub_-principles
which control the universe in detail. To these sub-principles, swayed by
the immediate spiritual influence of Deity. I leave, without examination,
_all that_ which the Student of Theology so roundly asserts I account for
on the _principles_ which account for the constitution of suns, &c.

"In the third column of his 'review' the critic says:--'He asserts that
each soul is its own God--its own Creator.' What I _do_ assert is, that
'each soul is, _in part_, its own God--its own Creator.' Just below, the
critic says:--'After all these contradictory propoundings concerning God
we would remind him of what he lays down on page 23--'of this Godhead in
itself he alone is not imbecile--he alone is not impious who propounds
_nothing_. A man who thus conclusively convicts himself of imbecility and
impiety needs no further refutation.' Now the sentence, _as I wrote it_,
and as _I find it_ printed on that very page which the critic refers to
and which _must have been lying before him_ while he quoted my words,
runs thus:--'Of this Godhead, _in itself_, he alone is not imbecile, &c.,
who propounds nothing.' By the italics, as the critic well knew, I design
to distinguish between the two possibilities--that of a knowledge of God
through his works and that of a knowledge of Him in his _essential
nature_. The Godhead, _in itself_, is distinguished from the Godhead
observed _in its effects_. But our critic is zealous. Moreover, being a
divine, he is honest--ingenuous. It is his _duty_ to pervert my meaning
by omitting my italics--just as, in the sentence previously quoted, it
was his Christian duty to falsify my argument by leaving out the two
words, 'in part,' upon which turns the whole force--indeed the whole
intelligibility of my proposition.

"Were these 'misrepresentations' (_is_ that the name for them?) made for
any less serious a purpose than that of branding my book as 'impious'
and myself as a 'p