men a manifest fuperiority of mind to the world and all the pleasures and pains of it.

To imagine, as you do, that the arguments for a future life from reafon alone, that is, from appearances in the common course of nature, are at all comparable to the evidence that refults from the gospel hiftory, and especially from the death and refurrection of Chrift (a man like ourfelves, and therefore, the moft proper pattern of a future univerfal refurrection) difcovers fuch a want of real difcernment and judgment, and fuch ignorance of human nature, as I will venture to fay, are no where more confpicuous than in thefe letters of yours.

Your representation of the doctrine of materialism as favourable to atheism, only fhews your ignorance of the fyftem that you wish to expose, as indeed what you dropped on the subject of ideas, p. 113. fufficiently fhewed before. But upon this I have faid fo much (more I fuppofe than you will ever take the trouble to read) in my Letters to a Philofophical Unbeliever, that I shall not reply to fuch trite and idle reasoning as yours here.

What you say on the fubject of the refurrection, if it has any weight at all, affects the chriftian doctrine, as taught by St. Paul. "The hope "which you hold out," you fay, p. 156" of a "refurrection, he" (the unbeliever)" will tell

you

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"you is no hope at all, even admitting that the " evidence of the thing could, upon your principles, be indifputable. The atoms which compofe me, your atheist will fay, may indeed "have composed a man before, and may again; "but me they will never more compofe, when "once the present me is diffipated. I have no no recollection of a former, and no concern "about a future felf."

This might have been copied from the writings of the heathen philofophers`against chriftianity. For if, as I have already intimated, there be any force in the objection, it will operate against the doctrine of a refurrection universally confidered. Because, if the thing that dies (and it is the body only that is ever faid to die) do not rife, and come to life again, there is no proper refurrection at all.

Whatever hope of a future life you may build on the Platonic doctrine of a foul, it is, I will venture to say, univerfally abandoned by the philofophical unbelievers of the prefent age; and, therefore, with respect to them, you can never establish any hope of a future life at all on any other principles than thofe purely chriftian ones which you endeavour to expofe; and whatever difficulties may attend the confideration of it, they will all vanifh, even to the philofophical mind, before the certain promife of that great being

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being who made us and all things. If we once believe that he has given us this affurance, we can never fuppofe that he will be at a lofs for proper means to accomplish his end; and if the gofpel hiftory be true, we have this affurance. But from natural appearances we have no evidence whatever of any thing belonging to man that can fubfift, feel, and act, when the body is in the grave. And what I maintain is, that we muft depart from all the known rules of philofophizing, before we can conclude that any such thing belongs to man.

From the fame mode of reafoning by which we can prove that there is an immaterial principle in man, we may also prove that there is fuch a principle not only in a brute, or a plant, but even in a magnet, and the most inanimate parts of nature. For even the most inanimate parts of nature are poffeffed of powers, or properties, between which and what we fee and feel of them, we are not able to perceive any connexion whatever. There is just as much connexion between the principles of fenfation and thought and the brain of a man, as between the powers of a magnet and the iron of which it is made, or between the principle of gravitation and the matter of which the earth and the fun are made; and whenever you fhall be able to deduce the powers of a magnet from the other properties of iron, you may perhaps be able to deduce the powers of fenfation

and thought from the other properties of the brain. But to you, Sir, the whole of this fubject is abfolutely terra incognita. I perceive no traces of your being much at home, as you pretend, in the Greek language, but here you are a perfect ftranger.

You are pleased to fupply unbelievers with objections to revelation on the views that I have given of it; but I can produce numbers who will tell you, that fuch christianity as yours, including the belief of three perfons in one God, is a thing abfolutely incapable of proof, and who have actually rejected it on account of this doctrine, which they confider as fo palpable an abfurdity, and contradiction, as not even miracles can make credible.

I am, &c.

LETTER

LETTER XVI.

Of Bifbop Bull's Defence of damnatory Claufes.

REV. SIR,

IN

N this Letter I fhall exhibit a curious fpecimen of your peculiar mode of controverfial writing, and the advantage you take of the moft trifling overfights in your opponents.

You gave the highest encomiums to the works of Bishop Bull, without any qualification or diftinction, and recommended them to your clergy, as an infallible guide in every thing relating to the fubject of our controversy. On this I faid, "As you recommend the writings of

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Bishop Bull without exception, I prefume that "you approve of his defence of the damnatory "claufe in the Athanafian creed. Indeed you " mentioned it among his moft valuable works." When I wrote this, I did not, to be fure, look into the title-page of the book, in order to copy the very words of it; but no perfon could have any doubt which of Bishop Bull's treatifes I really meant, as what I faid fufficiently characterized it. And though he does not mention the Athapafian creed in particular, he defends every thing at is harsh and fevere in the treatment of

unitarians