They were christians as well as
theists, so that their authority goes as far in one respect as in the
other. But if the opinions of men of great genius are to have weight,
what is to be said of modern men of genius? You, Sir, are of opinion
that the world is getting wiser as well as better. There is all the
reason in the world it should get wiser at least, since wisdom is only
a collection of experience, and there must be more experience as the
world is older. Modern Philosophers are nearly all atheists. I take the
term atheist here in the popular sense. Hume, Helvetius, Diderot,
D'Alembert. Can they not weigh against Locke and Newton, and even more
than Locke and Newton, since their store of knowledge and learning was
at hand to be added to their own, and among them are those who singly
possessed equal science in mathematics as in metaphysics? It is not
impossible, perhaps not improbable, from his course of learning and
inquiries, that if Dr. Priestley had not from his first initiation into
science been dedicated for what is called the immediate service of God,
he himself might have been one of the greatest disprovers of his
pretended divinity.
In England you think, Sir, that atheism is not prevalent among men of
free reasoning, though you acknowledge it to be much so in other
countries. It is not the first time it has been observed that the
greater the superstition of the common people the less is that of men
of letters.
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