"In remarking on my fourth proposition, which I added to the _three_ which you had proposed, you say, 'I will not be too positive that I rightly apprehend your meaning on this subject, but as you propose to allow my three propositions, and as you make no attempt to do away my reasoning, especially on my last,' &c. Here permit me to observe, I am well persuaded you did not fully understand me, whatever you did yourself, on this subject. You will perceive, sir, both by my fourth number, and also by my fifth, that my answer to your _three propositions_ was not completed. Probably if you had waited for the whole of my answer you would have understood me much better, and also would have seen the use and propriety of my fourth proposition. "I think, as you will perceive by my fifth number that even honest men may be mistaken. And if so, it is very important to know whether the apostles judged only from outward circumstances, or whether they had some internal evidence, called _inspiration_, by which they always knew the truth of the things whereof they affirmed. This was the object of my fourth proposition. "That you did not fully understand me appears by your saying, 'If it be allowed that my propositions are true, then you _consent_ to the validity of the apostles' testimony respecting a future state.' If this could be allowed, it might then be admitted, that in this argument it makes no difference how the apostles come by their 'knowledge of futurity.'--But I did not know, neither do I now perceive, that my admitting the apostles to be honest men makes it necessary also to admit the validity of their 'testimony respecting a future state;' unless it can be shown that honest men are never mistaken respecting the things whereof they affirm. I admit the '_honesty_' of my good friend, in the above quoted proposition; but I can hardly be willing, purely on this account, to '_consent_' to its truth. "As it respects an inheritance given in a WILL, &c. I have some doubts whether reason always carries things as far as you would wish to carry this metaphor to make it a parallel. Reason sometimes moves in a small circle; and that too without being unreasonable. If the benefit is said to have been absolutely made, and reason is informed of the fact, it has a right to take it for granted, that the donor had the property to give, and that it is not given to the injury of any one else. But yet he consults his own interest, and that only, when he says, 'this is very important to me, if true, yet I doubt, yea I have reasons for not believing it true.' Would any one say that such a man talketh unreasonably?