Note 23 — V. JOSEPH PRIESTLEY.

Not only is Priestley at one with Bishop Courtenay in this matter, but with Hartley and Bonnet, both of them stout champions of Christianity. Moreover, Archbishop Whately’s essay is little better than an expansion of the first paragraph of Hume’s famous essay on the Immortality of the Soul:—“By the mere light of reason it seems difficult to prove the immortality of the soul; the arguments for it are commonly derived either from metaphysical topics, or moral, or physical. But it is in reality the Gospel, and the Gospel alone, that has brought life and immortality to light.” It is impossible to imagine that a man of Whately’s tastes and acquirements had not read Hume or Hartley, though he refers to neither.