YOU may assure yourself, that if you come over this spring, you will find me not only got back into the habits of study, but devoted to that historical task, which you have set me these many years. I am in hopes of some materials which will enable me to work in the whole extent of the plan I propose to myself. If they are not to be had, I must accommodate my plan to this deficiency. In the mean time Pope has given me more trouble than he or I thought of; and you will be surprised to find that I have been partly drawn by him, and partly by myself, to write a pretty large volume upon a very grave and very important subject: that I have ventured to pay no regard whatever to any authority except sacred authority, and that I have ventured to start a thought which must, if it is pushed as successfully as I think it is, render all your metaphysical theology both ridiculous and abominable. There is an expression in one of your letters to me, which makes me believe you will come into my way of thinking on this subject; and yet I am persuaded that divines and freethinkers would both be clamorous against it, if it was to be submitted to their censure, as I do not intend that it shall. The passage I mean, is that, where you say you told Dr. Delany the grand points of Christianity ought to be taken as infallible revelations[1], &c.
It
- ↑ The work here alluded to, was the first volume of Dr. Dela-
ny's
