"1st. Notwithstanding all the learning of the Greeks and Romans, in the days of Jesus and his apostles, yet, as you very justly insinuate, I am inclined to believe there never was a time in which 'the world of human kind, both Jews and Gentiles, was more deeply involved in the darkness and stupidity of superstition than when the Messiah (i. e. Jesus) entered on his public ministry.' And notwithstanding your argument drawn from superstition, is admitted as good, and weighty, as far as it goes; yet, as it is conceived, it does not fully come to the point. "For, in the grossest ages of superstition it is reasonable to suppose that there are always some who entertain serious doubts and scruples in regard to the propriety of many of the superstitious notions of their leaders. These will be more easily wrought upon. And although they may be directed by various circumstances to fix the mind upon something much better in point of moral principle, yet how far this would prevent them from connecting many of the superstitious notions of the age with those moral principles, only giving them a different dress, I am not able to say; neither do I see how the superstition of the Jews and Gentiles, generally, would be likely to prevent a thing of that kind.--It is the suspected superstition of the apostles and primitive christians and not the superstition of their opposers, to which the proposition alludes. Men, I conceive, may be honest, and yet superstitious; they may also give up one superstition, by being convinced of its error, and yet another will gradually grow in its stead. I am sensible, however, that this argument will better apply to those who were converted to christianity after the days of the apostles, when it is agreed that miracles had ceased, than it will to the apostles themselves.