TENDENCY OF THE NEW DOCTRINE. 171 



expresses to my sense, is only impiety to me, who 

 cannot separate nature from God himself, but it is 

 not necessarily so to him, whose education has 

 given him peculiar, and as I think erroneous con- 

 ceptions on this subject. The absence, however, 

 of all liberality on these points in my reviewers, 

 is striking, and especially so in those whose 

 geological doctrines have exposed them to simi- 

 lar misconstructions. If the men newly emerged 

 from the odium which was thrown upon Newton's 

 theory of the planetary- motions, had rushed for- 

 ward to turn that odium upon the patrons of the 

 dawning science of geology, they would have been 

 prefiguring the conduct of several of my critics, 

 themselves hardly escaped from the rude hands of 

 the narrow-minded, yet eager to join that rabble 

 against a new. and equally unfriended stranger, as 

 if such were the best means of purchasing impu- 

 nity for themselves. I trust that a little time will 

 enable the public to penetrate this policy, and 

 also the real bearing of all such objections. 

 They must soon see that, if a literal interpretation 

 of scripture is an insufficient argument against the 

 true geognostic history of our earth, so also must 

 it be against all associated phenomena, supposing 

 they are presented on good evidence. 

 i2 



