norant of the contents of that work as he could have been had it never been published. It is reported, indeed, that the work, whatever may be its merits, has a very slow sale. Of consequence it has found but few readers. The antagonist of Dr. Priestley, were he better acquainted with its contents, would still disdain to do the office of midwife for this laborious birth. He would not, by an unnecessary and unseasonable opposition to neglected arguments, be the instrument of drawing four volumes, fraught, as the very title imports, with pernicious heretical theology, from the obscurity in which they may innocently rot in the printer's warehouse." Preface.

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Now, my Lord, I am confident that my expectation your producing any thing new and valuable on the subject of my History, is in reality less than yours concerning me; and yet had you, in the course of this controversy, produced a work of the same extent, on the same subject, more engaged as I am in business of various kinds than I can suppose so indolent a man as your Lordship to be, I should have had the curiosity at least to look into it. I therefore cannot help suspecting, with many others, that there is another reason for your not reading my work, (if what you say of it be literally true,) and a reason that is not at all to its disadvantage. Slow as the sale of so large a work on such a subject must be expected to be, it produces its effect, and will do so still more the more it is considered; and of this, I doubt not, you yourself have some secret suspicion; and that if your Lordship thought that your considering and answering it would have done more than your silence, indolent as you are, you would have been roused to a little more exertion. But where there is no hope of

success there can be no motive to action. At present your Lordship's conduct may be compared to that of a general who should say to his antagonist, "Sir, I shall return the fire of your small arms; but as to your cannon, I shall not trouble myself about them." But you, my Lord, have so ill returned the fire of the small arms, that I do not wonder at your willingness to turn away from artillery of a large size.

As if you could not depretiate your antagonist too much, which, however, lessens the importance of your victory over him, you now speak of my philosophical discoveries (which on a former occasion you thought proper to mention with some respect) as merely lucky ones. On this subject I shall not make any defence; for fortunate, no doubt, I have been, as I have always readily confessed. But every philosopher knows that a series of success of twenty years continuance could not be wholly fortuitous; and some praise is always due to activity in any useful pursuit.

If I were disposed to imitate your Lordship's contemptuous treatment of me, (which, however, I flatter myself is only affected,) I might inquire concerning your discoveries, the effect of luck or otherwise, and I do not know where to look for information concerning them.

Of your Commentary on the works of Newton, undertaken, as you say, "Societatis Regiæ Londinensis adhortatione, et summo Optimatum atque Literatorum totius Angliæ favore;" from which the world was led to expect a work that would do credit not only to yourself, but to the nation which had produced the original, I know as little as you do of my History of early Opinions concerning Christ, and therefore I can

say nothing of my own knowledge; but mathemati cians of my acquaintance do not say that it does much credit to either, and that your Notes illustrate no real difficulty.

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The depth of your Lordship's knowledge on the subject of this controversy has been sufficiently explored; and what you have published in the form of Sermons*, though at the request of grave bishops, on other subjects of theology, are truly curiosities of the kind, and have contributed to the amusement of such my friends as have had time to spare for the perusal of them. But as I hope the Public will not be influenced by your mere opinion concerning me or my writings, so neither do I desire that they should be influenced by mine concerning you or yours. Our arguments are before them, and I desire nothing more than a candid attention to them.

I am, &c.

LETTER II.

Of the Charge of Want of Candour in Dr. Priestley. MY LORD,

PROFESSING, as you somewhere do, to "strike at your adversary without remorse," (and, as I may add, without judgement or discretion,) and perhaps per

* One of these, viz. an Ordination Sermon, has been well animadverted upon by Mr. Wakefield, and another by the anonymous author of A Letter to his Lordship, occasioned by his Sermon on the Principle of Vitality in Man.

ceiving by the impression which your writings have made upon others, that you had indulged your pride and resentment rather more than became a christian, or more than answered your purpose, you seemed willing at least to bring me in as a sharer in your guilt, and charged me with " dividing the clergy into two classes, the ignorant and the insincere." In answer to this charge, I said that I could not pretend to recollect all that I had written, but that I was confident I never meant to say what you ascribed to me; that I had frequently declared the very contrary in the very frankest manner; and that if I had advanced any thing which by a fair construction should amount to the charge, I retracted it, and asked pardon. In a generous mind this kind of reply would have excited some generous sentiment; but it is to mistake the soil to expect any such produce from your Lordship.

After being frequently called upon to cite the passage on which your charge was founded, you now produce one in which I speak of trinitarians in general (but without any particular view to the clergy, many of whom are not trinitarians) as persons who, "if they were ingenuous, would rank with Socinians, believing that there is no proper divinity in Christ besides that of the Father, or else with tritheists, holding three equal and distinct Gods." You also quote two other passages, in one of which I speak of some persons as writing so weakly in defence of the doctrine of the Trinity, that it is barely possible that they should be in earnest; and another in which I suppose that some defenders of the established religion are insincere. But who will say that the whole of any class of men, defenders of an establishment or not, are sincere? Must

complaisance require us to say that there are no bad men in the world, or that any particular class of men is free from them, when truth requires the contrary, and candour allows that there are many who are good?

If what I have said with respect to ingenuousness had been interpreted by the general strain of my writings, the controversial ones not excepted, it would have been ascribed to what I have more than once said of that secret influence of motives, of which the agent himself is not distinctly apprized, and what only a rigorous examination of himself, and a comparison of his conduct with that of other men, can enable him to discover. In this sense many worthy persons are far from being those ingenuous and impartial inquirers after truth that they take themselves to be, not perceiving the real source or tendency of their principles.

As this is a subject to which I wish that more attention were given, I shall take the liberty to make a pretty large quotation from what I advanced concerning it in the very first of my controversial tracts, viz. Considerations on Differences of Opinion among Christians, addressed to Mr. Venn; and I do it the rather, as that pamphlet has now been long out of print, and, having fully answered its purpose, will hardly ever be reprinted. A small part of it was quoted before.

"Very few of the actions of men," p. 41, " have, I believe, one simple cause. We are generally influenced by a variety of motives in whatever we do. It therefore behoves us the more carefully to distinguish the influences to which we are subject, and under which we really act."

"When persons expressly avow the motives of their