_Oxford-Street, No._ 418.
_Jan._ 1, 1782.






ANSWER FROM A PHILOSOPHICAL UNBELIEVER.


It is the general fashion to believe in a God, the maker of all things,
or at least to pretend to such a belief, to define the nature of this
existing Deity by the attributes which are given to him, to place the
foundation of morality on this belief, and in idea at least, to connect
the welfare of civil society with the acknowledgement of such a Being.
Few however are those, who being questioned can give any tolerable
grounds for their assertions upon this subject, and hardly any two
among the learned agree in their manner of proving what each will
separately hold to be indisputably clear. The attributes of a Deity are
more generally agreed upon, though less the subject of proof, than his
existence. As to morality, those very people who are moral will not
deny, they would be so though there were not a God, and there never yet
has been a civil lawgiver, who left crimes to be punished by the author
of the universe; not even the profanation of oaths upon the sacredness
of which so much is built in society, and which yet is said to be a
more immediate offence against the Deity than any other that can be
named.