offspring, like a Chinese, I am tempted to worship, and I could exclaim with the first of poets, _"Erit ille mihi semper Deus."_ With such habits of education then, such fervent advice and such reverence for my instructor, what can have turned me from my belief; for I confess I am turned? Immorallity it is not; that I assert has not preceded my unbelief, and I trust never will follow it; there has not indeed yet been time for it to follow; whether it is a probable consequence will presently be discussed; but it is _thought_, free thought upon the subject; when I began freely to think I proceeded boldly to doubt; your Letters gave me the cause for thinking, and my scepticism was exchanged for conviction; not entirely by the perusal of your Letters; for I do not think they would quite have made me an Atheist! but by attention to that answer from my friend, which I have his permission to subjoin. In mentioning that doubts arose by reading your very Letters, which were written to eradicate all doubts, let me not accuse you of being unequal to the task assumed. I mean no such charge. You have in my opinion been fully equal to the discussion, and have bandied the argument ably, pleasingly and politely. I am certain from the extracts you have made from Dr. Clarke, the first of other Divines, I should have been converted from my superstition by his reasoning, even without perusal of an answer: I pay you however the compliment of having only brought me to doubt, and I find I am not the only person who have been led to disbelieve by reading books expressly written to confirm the Believer. Stackhouse's Comment upon the Bible, and Leland's View of Deistical Writers have perhaps made as many renegado's in this country as all the allurements of Mahometanism has in others. What can be said to this? They were both undoubtedly men of abilities, and meant well to the cause they had to support. All that I shall observe upon the matter is, that what cannot bear discussion cannot be true. Reasoning in other sciences is the way to arrive at truth: the learned for a while may differ, but argument at last finds its force, and the controversy usually ends in general conviction. Reasoning upon the science of divinity will equally have its weight, and all men of letters would long ago have got rid of all superstitious notions of a Deity, but that men of letters are frequently men of weak nerves; such as Dr. Johnson is well known to be, that great triumph to religionists; it requires courage as well as sense to break the shackles of a pious education; but if merely a resolve to reason upon their force can break them, what can we observe in conclusion but _"Magnus est veritas et prevalebit."_