As I value those efforts of yours, and have been instructed and
edified by them, I am proportionably sorry to find them treated in the
language of disparagement.

"You observe that 'the learned are as much at variance with each other
as the unlearned,' and this circumstance you say, 'weakens your
confidence.' But upon what subject are they not at variance, even
where Greek and Hebrew are not concerned? Have philosophers been
always agreed, when they have discoursed in one language? Have
chemists been always of one opinion, though the subjects of their
investigations are material bodies? You will not reply affirmatively.
And if not, and no system can be found which is not in some degree
'liable to misconstruction, disputation and deception,'--what are we
to do? Shall we depend upon nothing? Shall we remain immovable for
fear we should fall? Shall we never attempt to walk for fear we should
stumble? I must be allowed to express my concern, that, it should
appear 'not a little extraordinary to you that God should make a
revelation of his will in one age and not in another, to one nation
and not to another, or in one language and not in another, and if a
special revelation was ever necessary at all it is difficult for you
to see, why it is not equally necessary, in all ages of the world, to
all nations of the earth and in all languages ever spoken by man.' It
is true, I may be unable to see why a revelation was not equally
necessary to one nation as well as to another, and at the same time,
but is this a proof that no revelation was ever made to any nation at
any time? I know of no special reason why the laws of electricity were
not developed to my grandfather as well as to Dr. Franklin, with whom
he was contemporary; or why the great principles of civil liberty
should not have been discovered to other nations as well as to our
own, and at the same time, or to ALL nations, a thousand years before