THE principal source of objection to Dr. Priestley in England, certainly arose from his being a dissenter; from his opposition to the hierarchy, and to the preposterous alliance, between Church and State: an alliance, by which the contracting parties seem tacitly agreed to support the pretensions of each other, the one to keep the people in religious, and the other in civil bondage. His socinian doctrines in theology, and the heterodoxy of his metaphysical opinions, though they added much to the popular outcry raised against him, were not less obnoxious to the generality of Dissenters, than to the Clergy of the Church of England. Nor is it a slight proof of the integrity of his character, and his boldness in the pursuit of truth, that he did not hesitate to step forward the avowed advocate of opinions, which his intimate and most valuable friends, and the many who looked up to him as the ornament of the dissenting interest, regarded with sentiments of horror, as equally destructive of civil society and true religion.

The extreme difference observable between the apparent properties of animal and inanimate matter, easily led to the opinion of something more as necessary to thought, and the phenomena of mind, than mere juxta position of the elements, whereof our bodies are composed. The very antient opinion also of a state of existence after death, prevalent in the most uncivilized as well as enlightened states of society, confirmed this opinion of a separate and immortal part of the human system: for it was sufficiently evident, that no satisfactory hopes of a futurity after death, could be founded on the perishable basis of the human body.