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FIRST PUBLISHED IN

M.DCC.LXXII.

UNIV. OF

LETTER,

&c.

You will the more readily excuse this

intrusion, when you are assured that it proceeds not from any professional prejudice, any prospect (near or remote) of private emolument, any idle ambition of entering the lists, and breaking a lance with the champions for or against the Articles of our religion; but from a principle, which soberly and strenuously respects the civil and religious liberties of mankind, and which condemns alike an injudicious zeal, a timid neutrality, and a philosophic nonchalance, in every question which relates to the support of either.

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Such a question, you need not be informed, will soon be agitated in a place, where the constitution of your country has annexed a peculiar and an equal consequence to the opinion of each individual. Your single voice may tend, upon the present occasion, to the utter subversion of our ecclesiastical establishment; or it may tend to the further reformation of our church, to the thorough purging it from the remaining dregs and pollutions of Popery, to the final abolition of spiritual tyranny.

Having no connexions with the petitioning Clergy-I speak not this out of disrespect to them, or disapprobation of their design, though I do not wholly approve the manner of conducting itnor either leisure or inclination to read what has been written upon the subject of their Petition, by their friends or their enemies; you need not fear, lest I should weary out your patience, by entering too deeply into the discussion of the question. Learned men often involve clear matters

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