As for the newspapers, they began to pay their respects to Morse’s sensational utterance soon after the latter’s fast day sermon came from the press. Thus “An American” contributed an article of generous length and of somewhat hostile tone to the _Independent Chronicle_ of May 24 (1798), calling upon Morse to substantiate more fully the charge he had made. This pseudonymous contributor professed to have experienced great astonishment upon reading Morse’s sermon and finding that Robison’s _Proofs_ alone had been relied upon as a source of information and authority. So serious a matter seemed to demand fuller evidence. Thinking that perhaps Dr. Morse had been imposed upon and that the work in question was possibly apocryphal, the writer had been constrained to search through foreign literary journals with a view to discovering how the “performance” attributed to Robison was regarded abroad. Thus employed he had come across an article in _The Critical Review, or Annals of Literature_, London, 1797, wherein he found severe strictures upon Robison’s volume. In view of this, “since the _Doctors_ of Europe and America differ so widely in their estimation of its importance,” but a single course of honor and obligation would seem to be open to Dr. Morse. Having stood sponsor for the authenticity of such an extraordinary publication, he should now submit to the public decided proofs of the authority and correctness of the book in question.[646] To this sharp challenge of “An American,” Morse was not indifferent. Replying to his critic in a subsequent issue of the _Chronicle_,[647] he expressed the hope that the public would not form its judgment respecting Robison’s volume before reading the same, or at least not until it shall have heard further from its “humble servant, Jedidiah Morse.” Meantime, if his readers shall be pleased to peruse the observations clipped from the _New York Spectator_ by which his (Morse’s) letter to the _Chronicle_ is accompanied they will learn that “there is at least _one_ other person in the United States who has _read this_ work, [and] whose opinion of it accords with” his own.[648]