In mentioning that doubts arose by reading your very Letters, which
were written to eradicate all doubts, let me not accuse you of being
unequal to the task assumed. I mean no such charge. You have in my
opinion been fully equal to the discussion, and have bandied the
argument ably, pleasingly and politely. I am certain from the extracts
you have made from Dr. Clarke, the first of other Divines, I should
have been converted from my superstition by his reasoning, even without
perusal of an answer: I pay you however the compliment of having only
brought me to doubt, and I find I am not the only person who have been
led to disbelieve by reading books expressly written to confirm the
Believer. Stackhouse's Comment upon the Bible, and Leland's View of
Deistical Writers have perhaps made as many renegado's in this country
as all the allurements of Mahometanism has in others. What can be said
to this? They were both undoubtedly men of abilities, and meant well to
the cause they had to support. All that I shall observe upon the matter
is, that what cannot bear discussion cannot be true. Reasoning in other
sciences is the way to arrive at truth: the learned for a while may
differ, but argument at last finds its force, and the controversy
usually ends in general conviction. Reasoning upon the science of
divinity will equally have its weight, and all men of letters would
long ago have got rid of all superstitious notions of a Deity, but that
men of letters are frequently men of weak nerves; such as Dr. Johnson
is well known to be, that great triumph to religionists; it requires
courage as well as sense to break the shackles of a pious education;
but if merely a resolve to reason upon their force can break them, what
can we observe in conclusion but

_"Magnus est veritas et prevalebit."_

That religion or belief of a Deity cannot bear the force of argument is