A slight sketch of the controversy between Dr. Priestley and his opponents on the subject of his Disquisitions on matter and spirit / [Anon].

  • Samuel Badcock
Date:
[1780]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A slight sketch of the controversy between Dr. Priestley and his opponents on the subject of his Disquisitions on matter and spirit / [Anon]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    24/64 (page 16)
    / [ i6 ] What 1 refer to was an advertifement in feveral of the publick papers, announcing a reply in the Lon¬ don Review, by one James Seton, to the obnoxious pofition in the Dodtor’s Eflays. The advertifement, by a mutilated and unfair quotation, was artfully fa¬ bricated to leave the moll injurious imprellion on the minds of the public; for it infinuated, and almoft averted, that Dr. Prieftley had finiflied his theolo¬ gical career—‘Commenced an infidel of the moft pro¬ fligate fecft—and relinquifhed all belief in a future ftate. Nothing could be more falfe and invidious : and the forgers of this fcandalous libel were publicly confronted and expofed, jfirffc in a letter addrefled to Seton in feveral of the London papers, by a friend of Dr. Prieftley’s, and afterwards by the Doctor him- felf. His more furious and relentlefs enemies indeed endeavoured to revive this ill impreflion, by the fame fcandalous method of prefenting a mutilated para¬ graph that had been adopted by the advertifer of Se- ton’s Remarks; and that virulent writer, Shebbeare, in all the native bitternefs of his foul, traduced Dr. Prieftley as an infidel, and almoft an atheift! He abfurdly appealed to a paragraph to make good his allegation j which, confldered in its obvious and