"You think if I am 'disposed to doubt,' &c. it is my province to bring forward my 'strong reasoning,' &c. I know of no disposition that I feel respecting the subject but to ascertain, if possible, the truth. If I have doubts, it is not because I choose to doubt, but because I cannot help them; and if I have faith it is such as is given me. Of one thing I have no doubt; that is, that the truth, whatever it is, is right. But: "Admitting the scriptures are not true, I shall not attempt to guess what is true respecting the subjects to which they relate. For I might guess a hundred different ways to account for what we know is true, and all of them be wrong. "My doubts on this subject are nothing more than _doubts_; they do not amount to a confirmed _unbelief_; because they admit the possibility of the account's being true. "Yours, &c. A. KNEELAND." * * * * * LETTER IV. _Much esteemed friend_,--Your fourth number is hereby acknowledged; and though occasions for finding fault are in some measure extenuated, it still appears that you have lost the real connexion of your arguments, and have made the subject of the languages one of your main subjects, when judging from your first number, it was no more than a vestibule to the grand edifice which it was in your mind to examine. However, you having paid more than half, we will not stand about the fraction, as long as we have a profitable object in view. You call up what you call the subject. I suppose the main subject. This you state as follows: "In regard to a revelation from God, the three propositions which you have stated answer my mind well enough, as far as they go; to which however, I would wish to add a fourth, and ask; admitting the three first particulars true.--4th. Is it reasonable to suppose, that the apostles had any other means of forming their opinions, relative to a future state, than what passed before their eyes? viz. the miracles of Christ, the circumstance attending his death, his resurrection, and the miracles wrought by themselves in his name?" I wish, in this place, to show you that your added proposition possesses no power relative to our argument which is not comprehended in the last of the three which I stated. For if it be allowed, as you propose, that my propositions are true, then you consent to the validity of the apostles' testimony respecting a future state, which granted, it makes no difference in what way the apostles come to the knowledge of futurity. When a thing is known, it is known. The means by which it is known add nothing to either side of the argument. If you allow that my argument on this subject is correct, as it seems you do, then you acknowledge that God would not endow men with the power to heal the sick and raise the dead, whose testimony concerning a future state could be justly doubted. I will not be too positive that I rightly apprehend your meaning on this subject, but as you propose