think for yourselves; and you must do both with temper, with candour, and with care. Infidelity is a rank weed; it is nurtured by our vices, and cannot be plucked up as easily as it may be planted: your difficulties with respect to revelation may have first arisen from your own reflection on the religious indifference of those, whom, from your earliest infancy, you have been accustomed to revere and imitate; domestic irreligion may have made you a willing hearer of libertine conversation; and the uniform prejudices of the world may have finished the business, at a very early age, and left you to wander through life, without a principle to direct your conduct, and to die without hope. We are far from wishing you to trust the word of the Clergy for the truth of your religion; we beg of you to examine it to the bottom; to try it, to prove it, and not to hold it fast unless you find it good. Till you are disposed to undertake this task, it becomes you to consider with great seriousness and attention, whether it can be for your interest to esteem a few witty sarcasms, or metaphysic subtleties, or ignorant misrepresentations, or unwarranted assertions, as unanswerable arguments against revelation; and a very slight reflection will con

vince you, that it will certainly be for your reputation to employ the flippancy of your rhetoric, and the poignancy of your ridicule, upon any subject rather than upon the subject of Religion.

I take my leave with recommending to your notice, the advice which Mr. Locke gave to a young man who was desirous of becoming acquainted with the doctrines of the Christian religion." Study the holy Scriptures, especially the New Testament: therein are contained the words of eternal life. It has God for its author, salvation for its end, and truth without any mixture of error for its matter*."

I am, &c.

Locke's Posth. Works.

AUTHOR OF A BOOK ENTITLED, “THE AGE OF REASON, PART THE SECOND, BEING AN INVESTIGATION OF TRUE AND OF FABULOUS THEOLOGY."

Twelfth Edition.

M