"Yes, father, I am afraid it is. All are not so loving, and so forgetful of my errors as you. It was at the time inserted in the Boston NEWS LETTER, and is now recollected to the discredit of my religion. And they have a prejudice against me on another account. While I lived with you, father, you always took me to meeting with you; but when I left you and went to live with my brother James, I often neglected going to meeting; preferring to stay at home and read my books." "I am sorry to hear that, Ben; very sorry that you could neglect the preachings of Christ." "Father, I never neglected them. I look on the preaching of Christ as the finest system of morality in the world; and his parables, such as "The Prodigal Son"--"The Good Samaritan"--"The Lost Sheep," &c. as models of divine goodness. And if I could only hear a preacher take these for his texts, and paint them in those rich colours they are capable of, I would never stay from meeting. But now, father, when I go, instead of those benevolent preachings and parables which Christ so delighted in, I hardly ever hear any thing but lean, chaffy discourses about the TRINITY, and BAPTISMS, and ELECTIONS, and REPROBATIONS, and FINAL PERSEVERANCES, and COVENANTS, and a thousand other such things which do not strike my fancy as religion at all, because not in the least calculated, as I think, to sweeten and ennoble men's natures, and make them love and do good to one another." "There is too much truth in your remark, Ben; and I have often been sorry that our preachers lay such stress on these things, and do not stick closer to the preachings of Christ." "Stick closer to them, father! O no, to do them justice, sir, we must not charge them with not _sticking to the text_, for they never take Christ for their text, but some dark passage out of the prophets or apostles, which will better suit their gloomy education. Or if they should, by some lucky hit, honour Christ for a text, they quickly give him the _go-by_ and lug in Calvin or some other angry doctor; and then in place of the soft showers of Gospel pity on sinners, we have nothing but the dreadful thunderings of eternal hate, with the unavailing screams of little children in hell not a span long! Now, father, as I do not look on such preaching as this to be any ways pleasing to the Deity or profitable to man, I choose to stay at home and read my books; and this is the reason, I suppose, why my brother James and the council-men here of Boston think that I have no religion." "Your strictures on some of our ministers, my son, are in rather a strong style: but still there is too much truth in them to be denied. However, as to what your brother James and the council think of you, it is of little consequence, provided you but possess true religion." "Aye, TRUE RELIGION, father, is another thing; and I should like to possess it. But as to such religion as theirs, I must confess, father, I never had and never wish to have it."