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prove , was the leading cause of th ^ infidelity of the pupils . How far these gentlemen might , in any degree , or upon any occasion , be chargeable with an indiscreet zeal , it is not for me to say . But I can assure my worthy friend , that their zeal , even in its greatest fervour , never carried them so far as to assert , that it their opponents system should prove true ,
u men not only deceive themselves , but are deceived by their Maker . " My friend having thus discharged his battery against metaphysics in general , proceeds to attack two of its supposed strong-holds , materialism and necessity . The former of these hypotheses it is plain that he does not understand , for he reasons as though the philosophical materialist maintained that the soul of man was a solid and inert substance , a representation , than which , nothing can be more erroneous . Dr Price , who did understand the subject , acknowledges that there is but little difference between Dr Priestley ' s materialism
and his own spiritualism , and confesses that his acute op- ^ ponent had almost persuaded him to give up the existence of inert matter , and to admit the homogeneity of man *? . , My worthy , but too dogmatical friend , flounders nearly as much in his observations upon philosophical necessity as in those upon philosophical materialism , and seems to have formed a very indistinct idea of the doctrine which he denounces with such great solemnity . The necessarian contends that no one can perform a voluntary action without a motive , that is , without a reason or an inclination to
determine his choice ; and that it is not in his power to chuse differently while the same reason or inclination continues , or , as we commonly say , without altering his mind . This is the doctrine of necessity , and whether it be true or false ,
every one may judge by making the experiment in himself . This is a principle so obvious that few would hesitate to assent to it , when proposed in its simple and naked form . But if the principle be true , all the consequences legitimately drawn from it must be equally true , whether they are perceived and admitted or not . This is the system which my
inend represents as fraught with mischief , ' which militates against those ideas of holiness and sin which our Creator has tauo ' ht us : " and which , if it be true , ' we are deceived by our Maker himself . Philosophical liberty is the reverse of this . It * See the-Correspondence of Dr . Price and Dr . Pr ' estley , p . pfi , 57 , $ £
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Mr . Belskam ' s Strictures on Carpenter ' s Lectures . £ 57
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VOL . II . 2 M
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), May 2, 1807, page 257, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2380/page/33/
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