Watson, R: Apology for the Bible

Excerpt from An Apology for the Bible: In a Series of Letters, Addressed to Thomas Paine, Author of a Book Entitled, the Age of Reason, Part the Second, Being an Investigation of True and of Fabulous Theology

A fever, which you and thofe about you ex peéled' would prove mortal, made you remember with renewed fatisfaélion, that you had written: the former part of your Age of Reafon - 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 lime rity 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 Sn} preme' Being, and' diét-ating to us, tonxall'occav lions, what is right or wrong? Or is it'mercly. Our own judgment of the moral reétitude or turn pitude of our own aétions? I take-theiwordfi (withlvir. Locke) in~the latter, as iii-the Gilly intelligible ichfe. Now, who fees not that our: judgmentsof virtue and vice, right and wrong, are not always forined from an enlightened and, di'fpa¿ionate ufe of our reafon, in the' invelliga tion 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 theperfons with whom we a¿'ociate; from the-educiation we have had in our youth; from the books we have read at a more advanced period; and fromother-'accid'ental caules. (who fees not that, on this account.

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