BEING AN INVESTIGATION OF TRUE AND OF FABU
LOUS THEOLOGY.

BY R. WATSON, D. D. F. R.S.

LORD BISHOP OF LANDAFF, AND REGIUS PROFESSOR OF
DIVINITY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE.

Cork:

PRINTED BY A. EDWARDS, CASTLE-STREET.

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LETTER I.

SIR,

I HAVE have lately met with a book of your's,

entitled THE AGE OF REASON, part the fecond, . being an investigation of true and of fabulous theology;—and I think it not inconsistent with my station, and the duty I owe to fociety, to trouble you and the world with fome obfervations on fo extraordinary a performance. Extraordinary I esteem it; not from any novelty in the objections which you have produced against revealed religion (for I find little or no novelty in them) but from the zeal with which you labour to diffeminate your opinions, and from the confidence with which you efteem them true. You perceive, by this, that I give you credit for your fincerity, how much foever I may question your wisdom, in writing in fuch a manner on fuch a fubject: and I have no reluctance in acknowledging, that you poffefs a confiderable fhare of energy of language, and acuteness of investigation; though I must be allowed to lament, that thefe talents have not been applied in a manner more useful to human kind, and more creditable to yourself.

I begin with your preface. You therein ftatethat you long had an intention of publishing your thoughts upon religion, but that you had originally referved it to a later period in life.-I hope there is no want of charity in faying, that it

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would have been fortunate for the chriftian world, had your life been terminated before you had fulfilled your intention. In accomplishing your purpofe you will have unfettled the faith of thou-* fands; rooted from the minds of the unhappy virtuous all their comfortable affurance of a future recompence; have annihilated in the minds of the flagitious all their fears of future punishment; you will have given the reins to the domination of every paffion, and have thereby contributed to the introduction of the public infecurity, and of the private unhappiness, ufually and almoft neceffarily accompanying a state of corrupted morals.

No one can think worse of confeffion to a priest and fubfequent abfolution, as practifed in the church of Rome, than I do : but I cannot, with you, attribute the guillotine-maffacres to that cause. Men's minds were not prepared, as you fuppofe, for the commiffion of all manner of crimes, by any doctrines of the church of Rome, corrupted as I efteem it, but by their not thoroughly believing even that religion. What may not fociety expect from thofe, who fhall imbibe the principles of your book?

A fever, which you and thofe about you expected would prove mortal, made you remember, with renewed fatisfaction, that you had written the former part of your Age of Reafin-and you know therefore, you fay, by experience, the confcientious trial of your own principles. I admit this declaration to be a proof of the fincerity of your perfuafion, but I cannot admit it to be any proof of the truth of your principles. What is confcience? Is it, as has been thought, an internal monitor implanted in us by the Supreme Being, and dictating to us, on all occafions, what

is right or wrong? Or is it merely our own judg ment of the moral rectitude or turpitude of our own actions? I take the word (with Mr. Locke) in the latter, as in the only intelligible fenfe. Now who fees not that our judgments of virtue and vice, right and wrong, are not always formed from an enlightened and difpaffionate ufe of our reafon, in the investigation of truth? They are more generally formed from the nature of the religion we profefs; from the quality of the civil government under which we live; from the general manners of the age, or the particular manners of the perfons with whom we afsociate; from the education we have had in our youth; from the books we have read at a more advanced period; and from other accidental caufes., Who fees not that, on this account, confcience may be conformable or repugnant to the law of nature? -may be certain or doubtful?—and that it can be no criterion of moral rectitude even when it is certain, because the certainty of an opinion is no proof of its being a right opinion? A man may be certainly perfuaded of an error in reasoning, or of an untruth in matters of fact. It is a maxim of every law, human and divine, that a man ought never to act in oppofition to his conscience : but it will not from thence follow, that he will, in obeying the dictates of his confcience, on all occafions act right. An inquifitor, who burns jews and heretics; a Robefpierre, who maffacres innocent and harmless women; a robber, who thinks that all things ought to be in common, and that a ftate of property is an unjuft infringement of natural liberty-thefe, and a thoufand perpetrators of different crimes, may all follow the dictates of confcience; and may, at the real or fup.