The learned Mr. Henry Dodwell as he is usually called, and who is a pregnant instance that learning does not always persuade good sense to inhabit the same abode, took great pains to shew that the soul was naturally mortal, but might be immortalized by those who had the gift of conferring on it this precious attribute. This power he ascribed to the Bishops. Dodwell, though he would not at first join the establishment, changed his opinion and his conduct in this respect afterward. Bishop Sherlock denied that the existence of the soul could be made evident from the light of nature. (Disc. 2 p. 86. disc. 3 p. 114) Of the same opinion was Dr. Law who quotes him. Archbishop Tillotson declares (v. 12 serm. 2.) that he cannot find the doctrine of the immortality of the soul expressly delivered in scripture. Dr. Warburton wrote his “Divine legation” to prove that Moses and the Jews neither believed in, nor knew of a future state. Dr. Law, afterward Bishop of Carlisle, in the appendix to the third edition of his “Considerations on the theory of religion,” compleatly overthrows the whole doctrine of a separate soul as founded on the scripture, by a critical examination of every text usually adduced in its support. Dr. Watson the present Bishop of Landaff in the preface to his collection of theological tracts dedicated to young divines for whose use it was compiled, expressly declares that the question respecting the materiality or immateriality of the human soul, ranks among those subjects on which the _academicorum_ εποχη may be admitted, without injuring the foundations of religion. It should seem therefore, that it is not heterodoxy in mere speculative points of theology, that constitutes the sin against the holy Ghost with an established clergy, but heterodoxy on the subject of church authority and the grand alliance. It is in this spirit that the then Archdeacon of St. Albans, Dr. Horsely complains of Dr. Priestley’s history of the corruptions of christianity. “You will easily conjecture (says the Archdeacon in his animadversions on that work p. 5) what has led me to these reflections, is the extraordinary attempt which has lately been made to _unsettle the faith and break up the constitution of every ecclesiastical establishment in Christendom_. Such is the avowed object of a recent publication which bears the title of a history of the corruptions of christianity, among which the catholic doctrine of the trinity holds a principal place.”