You, Dr. Priestley, agree with me in that. Still
I hold the question capable of being illustrated by argument, and I
should hold the authority of great men's names to be of more weight in
this subject, were I not necessarily forced to consider that all
education is strongly calculated to support the idea of a Deity; by
this education prejudice is introduced, and prejudice is nothing else
than a corruption of the understanding. Certain principles, call them,
if you please, data, must be agreed upon before any reasoning can take
place. Disputants must at least agree in the ideas which they annex to
the language they use. But when prejudice has made a stand,
argumentation is set at so wide a distance, through a want of fixt data
to proceed upon, that attention is in vain applied to the dispute.
Besides, the nature of the subject upon which this prejudice takes
place, is such, that the finest genius is nearly equally liable to an
undue bias with the most vulgar. To question with boldness and
indifference, whether an individual, all-forming, all-seeing and
all-governing Being exists, to whom, if he exists, we may possibly be
responsible for our actions, whose intelligence and power must be
infinitely superior to our own, requires a great conquest of former
habitude, a firmness of nerves, as well as of understanding; it will
therefore be no great wonder, if such men as Locke and Newton can be
named among the believers in a Deity.
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