Gazette Of The United States, & Philadelphia Daily Advertiser

Dr. Priestley having compared "the principles of the Heathen Philosophy, with the principles of Christianity," in his late discourse observes,

"On the whole, we may surely say that, had modern unbelievers found in the scriptures any of the doctrines, which I have shown to have been professed by the philosophers of antiquity, had they found there the doctrine of two co-eternal principles, that of the emanation of all souls from the substance of the supreme being; the absorption of them into it again; with their repeated emissions and retractions to all eternity; had they found there the doctrine of the formation of all things by the fortuitous concurrence of atoms, that the air is filled with demons of different characters, directing the affairs of the world at their pleasure, and giving intimations of future events by omens, and divination; had they found in the scripture the doctrine of the pre-existence of all human souls, their lapse into gross bodies, where they are confined, and also contaminated by their connection with so debasing a companion, the purification of their embodied souls by austerity and mortification, their transmigration through the bodies of animals, by way of preparation for their ascent to the imperial regions; had they there found the doctrine of one common principle of intelligence, or soul of the universe, in all men and animals, without giving to each a permanent existence, had all or any of these doctrines been found in the scriptures, would they not have exclaimed against such crude notions and wild conceptions, and have rejected the system without farther examination? It was, in fact, the finding no such opinions as these in the scriptures, that first led Christian philosophers (after having adopted several of them from a heathen source, and having long endeavored to hold them in conjunction with their Christian principles) that led them to suspect their truth, and farther reflections on the subject led many to explode them altogether. Thus is the world indebted to Christianity for the detection of errors, which were the disgrace of human reason, though patronized by the most eminent philosophers of the heathen world—yet modern unbelievers; though lying, with the rest of the world, under so great obligations to Christianity, are now busily assailing it with every weapon of reason or ridicule. Its friends, however, are under no apprehensions about it. This very state of things was foreseen and foretold, by its founder. Revealed religion is so far from shrinking, that it invites, the strictest examination. Its friends being those of reason and truth, engage in its vindication only as supported by reason and truth, and as favorable to the best interests of mankind."