The Editor of this publication has more in object to answer Dr. Priestley than to deliver his own sentiments upon Natural Religion, which however he has no inclination to disguise: but he does not mean to be answerable for them farther, than as by reason and nature he is at present instructed. The question here handled is not so much, whether a Deity and his attributed excellences exist, as whether there is any Natural or Moral proof of his existence and of those attributes. Revealed knowledge i

Dr. Priestley, Your Letters addressed to a Philosophical Unbeliever I perused, not because I was a Philosopher or an Unbeliever; it were presumption to give myself the former title, and at that time I certainly did not deserve the latter; but as I was acquainted with another, who in reality, as far as I and others who know him can judge, deserves the title of a Philosopher and is neither ashamed nor afraid of that of an Unbeliever, I conceived them apt to be sent to my friend, and when I present

1. "Effects have their adequate causes." 2. "Nothing begins to exist without a cause foreign to itself." 3. "No being could make himself, for that would imply that he existed and did not exist at the same time." 4. If one horse, or one tree, had a cause, all had." 5. Something must have existed from all eternity. 6. "Atoms cannot be arranged, in a manner expressive of the most exquisite design, without competent intelligence having existed somewhere." 7. "The idea of a supreme author is more ple

1. "A cause needs not be prior to an effect." 2. "If the species of man had no beginning, it would not follow that it had no cause." 3. "A cause may be cotemporary with the effect." 4. "An atheist must believe he was introduced into the world without design."...

1. "A general mass of sensation consisting of various elements borrowed from the past and the future." 2. "Since sensation is made up of past, present, and future, the infant feeling for the moment only, the man recollecting what is past and anticipating the future, and as the present sensation must therefore in time bear a less proportion to the general mass of sensation than it did, so at last all temporary affections, whether of pain or pleasure become wholly inconsiderable." 3. "The great bo

1. "The question of the existence of a Deity is important." 2. "A Theist has a higher sense of personal dignity than an atheist."     3. "The conduct of an atheist must give concern to those who are not     so." 4. "An atheist believes himself to be, at his death, for ever excluded from returning life." 5. "There are more atheists than unbelievers in revelation." 6. "Men of letters may have the same bias to incredulity as others to credulity, because they are subject to a wrong association of id

Dr. Priestley will hardly doubt, after this collection from his work that it has at least been read before it is attempted to be answered. It is in the writer's power to quote the page and line for each assertion, but it would be stuffing this publication with unnecessary references. Dr. Priestley will be able to know what are his own sentiments and what not without recurring to his printed Letters. There has been also another difficulty in classing the several exceptions under the different hea