it is said, that the writer of that book was inspired.  Examine, therefore, candidly, what evidence there is of his having been inspired.  The pretension is entitled to your inquiry, because millions believe it.  On the other hand, you are astronomer enough to know, how contrary it is to the law of nature, that a body revolving on its axis, as the earth does, should have stopped, should not, by that sudden stoppage, have prostrated animals, trees, buildings, and should after a certain time have resumed its revolution, and that without a second general prostration.  Is this arrest of the earth’s motion, or the evidence which affirms it, most within the law of probabilities?  You will next read the New Testament.  It is the history of a personage called Jesus.  Keep in your eye the opposite pretensions, 1. of those who say he was begotten by God, born of a virgin, suspended, and reversed the laws of nature at will, and ascended bodily into heaven:  and, 2. of those who say he was a man, of illegitimate birth, of a benevolent heart, enthusiastic mind, who set out without pretensions to divinity, ended in believing them, and was punished capitally for sedition, by being gibbeted, according to the Roman law, which punished the first commission of that offence by whipping, and the second by exile or death in furca.  See this law in the Digest, Lib. 48, tit. 19, Sec. 28. 3. and Lipsius, Lib. 2. De Cruce, cap. 2.  These questions are examined in the books I have mentioned, under the head of Religion, and several others.  They will assist you in your inquiries; but keep your reason firmly on the watch in reading them all.  Do not be frightened from this inquiry by any fear of its consequences.  If it ends in a belief that there is no God, you will find incitements to virtue in the comfort and pleasantness you feel in its exercise, and the love of others which it will procure you.  If you find reason to believe there is a God, a consciousness that you are acting under his eye, and that he approves you, will be a vast additional incitement:  if that there be a future state, the hope of a happy existence in that, increases the appetite to deserve it:  if that Jesus was also a God, you will be comforted by a belief of his aid and love.  In fine, I repeat, you must lay aside all prejudice on both sides, and neither believe nor reject any thing, because any other person, or description of persons, have rejected or believed it.  Your own reason is the only oracle given you by Heaven, and you are answerable not for the rightness, but uprightness of the decision.  I forgot to observe, when speaking of the New Testament, that you should read all the histories of Christ, as well of those whom a council of ecclesiastics have decided for us to be Pseudo-evangelists, as those they named Evangelists.  Because these Pseudo-evangelists pretended to inspiration as much as the others, and you are to judge their pretensions by your own reason, and not by the reason of those ecclesiastics.  Most of these are lost.  There are some, however, still extant, collected by Fabricius, which I will endeavor to get and send you.