Notwithstanding the attention that I gave to philosophy in this situation, I did not discontinue my other studies, especially in theology and metaphysics. Here I wrote my _Miscellaneous Observations relating to education_, and published my _Lectures on Oratory and Criticism_, which I dedicated to Lord Fitzmaurice, Lord Shelburne’s eldest son. Here also I published the third and last part of my _Institutes of Natural and Revealed religion_; and having in the Preface attacked the principles of Dr. Reid, Dr. Beattie, and Dr. Oswald, with respect to their doctrine of _Common Sense_, which they made to supercede all rational inquiry into the subject of religion, I was led to consider their system in a separate work, which, though written in a manner that I do not intirely approve, has, I hope, upon the whole been of service to the cause of free inquiry and truth.[14] [14] This reply of Dr. Priestley to the Scotch Doctors, though not written in a manner that his maturer reflection approved, compleatly set at rest the question of Common Sense as denoting the intuitive evidence of a class of moral and religious propositions capable of satisfactory proof, or of high probability from considerations _ab extra_. But Dr. Reid ought hardly to be classed with coadjutors so inferior as the Drs. Oswald and Beattie. The latter wrote something which he meant as a defence of the christian religion; but such defenders of christianity as Dr. Beattie and Soame Jenyns, are well calculated to bring it into contempt with men of reason and reflection. T. C. In the preface I had expressed my belief of the doctrine of _Philosophical Necessity_, but without any design to pursue the subject, and also my great admiration of Dr. Hartley’s theory of the human mind, as indeed I had taken many opportunities of doing before. This led me to publish that part of his _observations on man_ which related to the doctrine of association of ideas, detached from the doctrine of vibrations, prefixing _three dissertations_, explanatory of his general system. In one of these I expressed some doubt of the immateriality of the sentient principle in man; and the outcry that was made on what I casually expressed on that subject can hardly be imagined. In all the newspapers, and most of the periodical publications, I was represented as an unbeliever in revelation, and no better than an Atheist.