"With these remarks I hasten to a _CONCLUSION_.
"In taking leave of this subject, considering it probable that these letters will, at some future time, come before the public, it is but just that I should more fully avow my motives in this controversy. You will have perceived, all along, the ground on which I stood. I have endeavoured to personate an honest inquirer after truth; but one who was filled with doubts concerning every thing of which there is not positive demonstration. How far I have acted up to such a character, you and the public can best judge.
"I thought, however, I should be the most likely to do this, by bringing those objections, and these only, which, at one time or another, have occupied my own mind. But, that the controversy might not appear as a mere _farce_, or like a man raising objections against himself (in which case he generally takes care to raise none but what he thinks he can answer) and that I might engage all your interest and energy on the subject, I have carried the idea, through the whole, both by my letters and by my private conversation with you during the time (as you very well know) that those objections were now laboring in my mind with all their force. I have therefore endeavoured to dispute every inch of ground, and give way only as I found myself obliged to give way, by the force of your arguments. That I have not acted my part better must be imputed to want of ability and not to want of good will. I have endeavoured to throw every block in your way which I could think of, without deviating from the character which I had assumed; and that I have not made your task more arduous, is because I did not see how I could do it without betraying a manifest dishonesty on my part. The result is such as I anticipated.
"My real motive must be my only apology for the part I have taken. You know that no work of the kind has ever been really and seriously attempted by any one who is avowedly of our order; that our religious opponents are continualiy throwing the gauntlet of aspersions at us, as being nothing more than mere pretenders to christianity, but in reality, _Deists_ in disguise. To repel, therefore, those charges, as well as to let the unbelieving world know our views on this subject, I thought a work of this kind was really needed. And it appeared to me that the work, in the first place, would be more likely to be read, and, in the end, more sure of success, to have it come forth by the way of controversy, than what it would in any other way.