I cannot think you will view this letter with stoic coolness, or with
listless indifference. Absorbed as the generality of men are in the
pursuits of pleasure or the avocations of business, there are times when
the mind looks inward upon itself, when a review of past follies induces
us to future amendment, and when a consciousness of having acted wrong
leads us to resolutions of doing right. In one of those fortunate
moments may you receive these last admonitions! Shun but the rock on
which I have struck, and you will be sure to avoid the shipwreck I have
suffered. Initiated in the army at an early period of life, I soon
anticipated not only the follies, but even the vices of my companions.
Before, however, I could share with undisturbed repose in the wickedness
of others, it was necessary to remove from myself what the infidel terms
the prejudices of a Christian education. In this I unfortunately
succeeded; and conceiving from my tenderest years a taste for reading,
my sentiments were confirmed, not by the flimsy effusions of empty
libertines, but by the specious sophistry of modern philosophers. It
must be owned that at first I was rather pleased with the elegance of
their language than the force of their reasoning; as, however, we are
apt to believe what we eagerly wish to be true, in a short time I soon
became a professed deist.
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