"It is
incalculable what evil such a person as he may do, if so disposed.
There is a sublimity in his ideas, with which there is to me a
mixture of terror; and, when he talks of religion, he does it as one
that rather dreads its truths than reverences them. He, indeed,
pretends great strictness of orthodoxy regarding some of the
points of doctrine embraced by the reformed church; but you do
not seem to perceive that both you and he are carrying these
points to a dangerous extremity. Religion is a sublime and
glorious thing, the bonds of society on earth, and the connector of
humanity with the Divine nature; but there is nothing so
dangerous to man as the wresting of any of its principles, or
forcing them beyond their due bounds: this is of all others the
readiest way to destruction. Neither is there anything so easily
done. There is not an error into which a man can fall which he
may not press Scripture into his service as proof of the probity of,
and though your boasted theologian shunned the full discussion
of the subject before me, while you pressed it, I can easily see
that both you and he are carrying your ideas of absolute
predestination, and its concomitant appendages, to an extent that
overthrows all religion and revelation together; or, at least,
jumbles them into a chaos, out of which human capacity can
never select what is good.
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