_"In the image of himself made he man."_ A favourite text with
theologians; but surely they do not mean that this God Almighty of
theirs has got a face and person like a man. No; that they exclaim
against, and, when we push them for the resemblance, they confess
it is in the use of reason; it is in the soul.
I am aware that I am not here to mix questions of Christianity with the
general question of a Divinity; subjects of a very distinct enquiry,
and which in the Letters to a Philosophical Unbeliever are very
carefully separated. The subject of revelation is indeed promised
afterwards to be taken up, provided the argument in favour of Natural
Religion meets with a good reception. How, Dr. Priestley, you can judge
of that reception I am at a loss to know, otherwise than by the number
of editions you publish. It is then in the sum total just as much as if
you had said, "provided this book sells well I will write another." Yet
it may be sold to many such readers as I have been, though you will
hardly call such reception good. You that have wrote so much, to whom
it is so easy to write more, who profess a belief of revelation, such a
laborious enquirer, and so great a master of the art of reasoning,
should rather have engaged at once to prove in a subsequent publication
the truth of revealed religion in arguments, as candid and as fairly
drawn as those you have used in proof of a Deity independent of
revelation.
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