The Bishop seems to think, that savages have not so perfect a notion of God as we imagine: religion, he supposes, begins as it were in express revelation. This is but the fancy of a clergyman, unsupported by any proofs; but at least it shows, that the Bishop involuntarily acknowledges, that reason alone can hardly give us the idea of a ruling Being. The savage, it is true, does not discourse in a metaphysical jargon; he wants expressions: but I wish the Doctor would inform me in what our Catechism definition of God is clearer than the notions of the rudest savage, who, trembling at the approach of thunder and violent convulsions of nature, or enjoying the genial sun and fertilizing inundations, imagines all the world to be animated with his own passions. The thunder is a mark of wrath, while the blessings are signs of a propitious genius. To conciliate these imaginary beings, to avert their wrath, is the grand object of superstition. Schoolmen conceal, under their mystical jargon, the real materials which their gods are made of; they conceal that the Supreme Artificer is the offspring of fancy, the figurative and unphilosophical symbol of nature, to which they give human dispositions: in all religious systems men are the type of their gods. Your letter concludes with a remark sufficiently extraordinary, that most Deists of your acquaintance disbelieve the mysterious conversations of God, his miracles, and such other stories, because they are too wonderful, and against the order of nature. Your reply is curious: because we never have seen the like of them, does it follow that they are untrue? Give me leave to tell you, my Lord, that you have forgotten the rules of logic: you know, that in all cases, but of demonstration, the philosopher does nothing but weigh probabilities. Any thing that is conceivable is possible: but are we therefore to believe in the existence of witches or necromancers? Are we to give credit to the world having sprung from an egg? That Mahomet divided the moon? That the sun stood still? That astrology is a science? Yet what reason have we to disbelieve them? The respective supporters of these opinions may say with the Doctor, that nothing can be too wonderful, and that, because these things have not happened in our time, it does not follow they should be untrue. I acknowledge, with the Doctor, that many Deists admit a Being as inconceivable as any religious mystery; therefore it may seem ridiculous in them to stop their credulity; since we call God just, when nothing but a concatenation of causes and effects can be perceived in the world; when we proclaim him benevolent, while the world is full of vice, while millions perish in misery, and continual calamities befal mankind; while, in short, most men have the gloomy prospect of damnation before them. These are greater miracles than an universal deluge, making a woman from a rib, or God's countenancing the atrocious murders of Jews. He that will believe one