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    it becomes of more importance that whoever i £ desirous of making your valuable miscellany the medium of communication with the public , should be careful to study brfevity , as far as may be consistent with justice to his

    subjecU If this remark had occurred to the gentleman who has , at length , assumed the signature of A . L ~ B . and who , as he doubtless means well , it may be hoped will soon feeJ bold enough to give us his real name , he would have omitted at leaU one half- of the

    long letter which you have been tinder the necessity of dividing into two parts , in order to afford it admission : since ruore than one half of it , though it purports to be a " comment on Mr . S ' s

    paper , " has no sort of relation to any thing that I had said , and might as well have been tacked to an essay on any other subject . For instance , he descants at great length on the imperfection of human reason , and assures us that 4 C it does not afford a sure

    criterion of right , " and * that it has at different times , formed and adopted creeds , as different from each other as light from dark ; ' * positions which 1 never thought of denying , and which I suppose nobody ever doubted . It may

    however , not be improper to remark , by the way , that whether the imperfection of reason be more or less , it must necessarily be our director and judge , in the study of the book of scripture , as well as the book of nature ; because

    «? e have no other ; and history shews , that it is no less liable to form ** opposite opinions" and 4 € jarring speculative theori ^ " in the former case , than in the latter . He then thinks fit to entertain your

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    readers with a dissertation on the power of conscience , and another on the morality of savages ; on neither of which I had offered a single word . Afterwards he tell * you , that he has " to defend his assertion , that a religious motive

    alone can sanctify any , even our best actions / ' Against whom has he to defend it ? Not , surely , against me ; for I will venture to say there is not a syllable in my observations on his paper , which can be twisted into any thing like a denial of this assertion .

    Your correspondent , however , though the greater part of his letter is quite foreign to the main point in which 1 differed from him , has , in the little that relates

    to it , —I dare say unintentionally , —done me the greatest injustice * He concludes , from my objecting to eternal punishment , that I am not half so familiar with the scriptures , as he thinks I am with the

    pages of philosophy ; whereas he ought to know , and it is surprising that he does not know , that there have been many diligent readers of the scriptures , eminent for

    learmng and abilities , who have endeavoured to shew , and have succeeded in convincing thousands of sincere Christians , that they contain nothing favourable to the common opinion , that the punishment of the wicked will be in the

    strict sense of the word , eternal . He tells you also , that if Mr . S * never looks on the scriptures in any other light than as a book of ii

    mere human origin ;* ' that Mr . S . cannot honestly recommend them to any living being "—that € i Mr . S , would willingly substitute books of philosophy for the collection called the scriptures "—• that "he stems to think it $ i mat-

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    Mr . Sttirchj in Reply to A . L . E . oh the Scriptures . 769

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Dec. 2, 1813, page 765, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2435/page/13/