P. ERRATA. 4. 1. 8. for stops read stop. 93. 1. 15. and 7. from the bottom, for Lock read Locke. 202. 1. 4. for carried. read carried? 5. for dress read dress. 279. I. 15. for chance, read chance? 283. l. 17. dele of 18. for knowledge, read knowledge) 295. 1. 15, 16. from the bottom, for qualities. If read qualities of 879. 1. 4. from the bottom, for mentem. read mentem; A LETTER OCCASIONED BY ONE OF Archbishop TILLOTSON's Sermons. I COME from reading, in Barbeyrac's translation of Tillotson's Sermons, the discourse you mentioned on a late occasion; and the effect of it has been to confirm me in this opinion, that the theist is a much more formidable enemy to the atheist than the divine. The former takes all the real advantages against a common adversary, which the latter has it in his power to take; but he gives none against himself, as the latter is forced to do. When the divine writes or disputes on any subject, relative to his profession, he is always embarrassed by his theological system; whether his mind be so or not, his tongue and his pen cannot be otherwise. A theist is under no constraint of this kind. He may speak the truth, such as it appears to him, when the divine, though it appears the same to him, must be silent. The theist may be silent, by regards of prudence, when the divine is obliged to speak, by the obligation of his profession, and to maintain what he cannot defend, as well as what he can and thus if he imposes on some, he exposes himself to the attacks of others. When the theist has demonstrated the existence of a supreme and all-perfect Being, and the moral obligations of his rational creatures, he stops, where the means of human knowledge stops, and makes no vain and presumptuous efforts to gọ beyond them, by the help of reason and revelation. Just so, when he has proved that the world had a beginning, on foundations of the highest probability tradition can give, he stops short likewise; because, in the nature of things, we can have no other proof of the fact. vine. His system drags him on. most absurdly, to support, in the demonstrated truth by false arguments, and, in the second, to make tradition vouch for more than any receivable tradition does or can vouch. The Archbishop, himself, seems sensible of this in one place for having asserted the universal assent of mankind to this great truth, that there is a God, and having ascribed the universality of this assent to the nature of the human mind, on which God has impressed an innate idea of himself, he tries to evade the absurdity by adding, Not so the di He attempts, first case, a or which, that is the human mind, is so disposed, "that men may discover, by the due use of it's "faculties, the existence of God." He endeavours to evade the theological absurdity, which he could not maintain, but he endeavoured it in vain : |