You have thought it not inconsistent with your dignity as a Bishop, to oppose the _Age of Reason by Thomas Paine_, and I, as a member of the community, find myself called upon to expose your reasoning, and stop the career of error. You disclaim controversy; but if your candour is any thing more than a vain boast, I entertain hopes of seeing the defender of Christianity again step forward to answer my arguments, if he deems them of sufficient weight to disturb his quiet. I am sincerely glad to find a dignified churchman begin a dispute with men, whom formerly the pious members of the Church would have deemed fit victims for the fire or the gallows; at the same time, I feel deep regret, that the Bishop has not yet altogether laid aside the clerical passion for the extermination of the heterodox. I hope, says Dr. Watson, that there is no want of charity in wishing, that Mr. Paine's life had been terminated long before his publication. This may be consistent with Christian charity, but nature and reason teach us ugly unbelievers another doctrine: and, however inveterate I may be against those of the clergy who persecute and deceive the multitude, I confess, that the death of a person, whom I conceive to be acting for what he thinks the public good, would give me no pleasure; and the Bishop allows the purity of Mr. Paine's motives. The wish of the philosopher is, let reason guide us, and all parties have freedom of debate. No dogmatical dictates of bigotted priests, no passive obedience to the mandates of inquisitors, nor to the persecutions so often fomented by churchmen. To the progress of letters, during this century, we owe the mildness and condescension of clergymen: till philosophy taught us, the clergy never discovered, that persecutions for heresy and witchcraft, or inquisitions and popery, were horrid institutions. Dares Dr. Watson affirm, that freedom of inquiry was ever suffered on religious subjects? that people were allowed to examine the grounds of the doctrines taught by the Church? No, Sir, your predecessors of all beliefs have ever persecuted philosophers and inquirers into truth, both in science and in religion. Neither Galileus nor Rousseau escaped the malevolence of the opposers of science; and in the Bible they found authorities for their inveterate opposition to the progress of truth and knowledge. The New Testament informs us, that the wisdom of God is foolishness to man, that human learning produces nothing but pride 1, and that the poor in spirit gain the kingdom of heaven. 1 "Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ." Colos. ii. 5, 8. "Cum sit nobis divinis literis traditum cognitiones philosophorum stultas esse, ad ipsum re et argumentis docendum et; ne quit bouesto sapieutiæ nomine inductus, aut inanis eloquentiæ splendore deceptus, humanis malet quam divinis credere."