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fury of which you have borne, and which you have, in fome measure, broken, and rendered less hazardous to those who come after you. time of withdrawing from this busy scene is not yet come; but while I feel myself animated with your love of truth, I fhall enjoy an enviable compofure even in the midft of the tempeft; and I fhall endeavour to relieve the severity of these more serious purfuits, with thofe of philofophy, as you have done with those of claffical literature.

Whatever you may think of fome parts of my reasoning in the principal work, now prefented to you, I am confident you will approve of the main object of it, and efpecially the Sequel. You have long been an affertor of the proper unitarian doctrine, and cannot be displeased with my endeavour

2 4.

deavouring to trace to their fource in heathen antiquity, thofe capital corruptions of chriftianity-the Athanafian and Arian opinions.

The proper unity of God, the maker and governor of the world, and the proper humanity of Chrift, you juftly confider as respectively effential to natural and revealed religion; and confequently entertain a reasonable fufpicion and dread of any opinions that infringe upon them; and the more venerable those opinions have become on account of their antiquity, or the numbers, or worldly power, by which they are supported, fo much the more do they excite your indignation and zeal.

I rejoice with you, on account of fuch a prevalence of free inquiry, and good fenfe in matters of religion, in the present age, as cannot fail, in the

end, to overturn the antichristian systems that have been permitted by divine providence to prevail so long in the chriftian world, and confequently (though probably in a remote period) the antichriftian tyrannies that have supported them.

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PRE FAC E.

T may appear fomething extraordinary,

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Ibut it is frictly true, that but a very few

years ago, I was fo far from having any thoughts of writing on the subject of this publication, that I had not even adopted the opinion contended for in it. Like the generality of christians in the present age, I had always taken it for granted, that man had a foul diftinct from his body, though with many modern divines, I fuppofed it to be incapable of exerting any of its faculties, independently upon the body; and I believed this foul to be a substance fo intirely distinct from matter, as to have no property in common with it. Of this several traces may be found in my Inftitutes of Natural and Revealed Religi on, and probably in fome of my other writings. Not but that I very well remember that many doubts occurred to me on the fubject of the intimate union of two substances so intirely hetero

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