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OP THE LIBERTY OP REASONING ON MATTERS 

 OF BELIEF. 

 i 



BY MR. WIELAND. 



■t Hi. * 



It might be confidered as an evident fign of a 

 lamentable retrogreiTion of found judgement amongft 

 mankind, if ever the freedom of delivering our 

 thoughts on objects that are undoubtedly fubmitted to 

 reafon, mould be declared by the critics either un- 

 feemly or inadmiffible. It would indeed be a very 

 illiberal and unphilofophical way of philofophizing, if 

 the man who attempts to penetrate with the torch of 

 reafon into the darken: receffes of human ideas, mult 

 tremble at every ftep, for fear of making a difcovery 

 whereby fome old or young Hircocervus fhouid be 

 feen in its proper fhape, and pronounced to be what it 

 really is : or if, while analyfing and comparing human 

 ideas and opinions, he muft always forefee the remit of 

 thefe operations ; and immediately Hop fhort in his re-< 

 flections as foon as he came to one, from whence fome 

 honeft dogmatifer or another might draw a confequence 

 which did not exactly tally with his formulary of te- 

 nets. 



Reafon — without which, we, the fons of Adam, 

 fhouid be at all times neither more nor lefs than grani- 

 vorous and carnivorous Yahoos — muft by its very na- 

 ture be entirely free in its operations. The ufe of this 



free- 



