Answer to Dr. Priestley's Letters to a Philosophical Unbeliever — Text and Context

The Limits of Natural Proof

The author repeatedly challenges Priestley’s claim that nature itself demonstrates a creator. He seizes on Priestley’s concession that “the course of nature may be as it is without a God,” arguing this undermines any natural proof of a Deity. Priestley’s argument for a future state—that it is “proper” and therefore probable—is dismissed as “an argument perhaps more of wish than probability.” The author insists that if a moral governor existed with uncontrouled dominion, virtue ought to be the certain and immediate parent of happiness, not merely a better chance. He points to experience: “We cannot to any purpose, do what we will, argue against experience. That it must be, yet that it is not.” This empirical skepticism drives the entire reply.

Morality Without a Moral Governor

The author does not aim to promote immorality; rather, he contends that grounding morality on belief in a Deity is precarious. He observes that the proof of God’s existence is so ambiguous that even pious men have doubts, yet so much moral purpose depends on it. This, he suggests, is an argument against God’s infinite morality. He grants that virtue gives a better chance for happiness than vice, but notes that “a sensible atheist should hold it right to be virtuous” on that basis alone. He cites the example of David Hume, “who most indubitably was an atheist,” as having an end as happy as any. The author’s aim is to substitute better foundations for morality, not to destroy it.

The Eye and the Argument from Design

The author directly confronts the classic argument from design, encapsulated in Priestley’s quotation: “He that made the eye, must he not see?” He retorts by questioning the premise: “Who made the eye?” Even granting that God made the eye, he points out that the eye can only see in light, and asks whether God must therefore see in the dark. More fundamentally, he proposes an alternative: the eye may exist necessarily as a part of nature, as much as any other combination of matter. If so, the argument from design collapses. This line of reasoning—challenging the necessity of a designer by positing natural necessity—is a key structural move in the pamphlet’s skeptical case.

Readers should note that the author’s disavowal of defending his views in controversy, stated in the Advertisement, complicates the work’s rhetorical stance. He presents himself as a private speculator, not a proselytizer, yet his arguments are pointed and his examples (like Hume) deliberately provocative. The pamphlet is best approached as a document of Enlightenment freethinking, where the boundaries between natural religion, atheism, and morality are tested through close logical engagement with a specific opponent.

That anonymous voice from 1782—so sure that faith and morality could part ways without unraveling—stayed with me long after I closed it. It felt less like a debate than a quiet release. I remembered that same patient trembling in The Discoverie of Witchcraft — Text and Context, where old certainties loosen their grip and leave you holding only your own questions, gently. Strange how two centuries can feel like a shared whisper.