Congratulate yourself, then, Madam, on being born with good dispositions, of having received honest principles, which shall carry you through life in the practice of virtue, and in the love of a fine and exalted taste for the rational pleasures of our nature. Continue to be the happiness of your family, which esteems and honors you. Continue to diffuse around you the blessings you enjoy; continue to perform only those actions which are esteemed by all the world, and all men will respect you. Respect yourself, and others will respect you. These are the legitimate sentiments of virtue and of happiness. Labor for your own happiness, and you will promote that of your family, who will love you in proportion to the good you do it. Allow me to congratulate myself if, in all I have said, I have in any measure swept from your mind those clouds of fanaticism which obscure the reason; and to felicitate you on your having escaped from vague theories of imagination. Abjure superstition, which is calculated only to make you miserable; let the morality of humanity be your uniform religion; that your happiness may be constant, let reason be your guide; that virtue may be the idol of your soul, cultivate and love only what is virtuous and good in the world; and if there be a God who is interested in the happiness of his creatures, if there be a God full of justice and goodness, he will not be angry with you for having consulted your reason; if there be another life, your happiness in it cannot be doubtful, if God rewards every one according to the good done here.
Of the small Consequence to be attached to Men's Speculations, and the Indulgence which should be extended to them.
Permit me, Madam, to felicitate you on the happy change which you say has taken place in your opinions. Convinced by reasons as simple as obvious, your mind has become sensible of the futility of those notions which have for a long time agitated it; and the inefficacy of those pretended succors which religious men boasted they could furnish, is now apparent to you. You perceive the evident dangers which result from a system that serves only to render men enemies to individual and general happiness. I see with pleasure that reason has not lost its authority over your mind, and that it is sufficient to show you the truth that you may embrace it. You may congratulate yourself on this, which proves the solidity of your judgment. For it is glorious to give one's self up to reason, and to be the votary of common sense. Prejudice so arms mankind that the world is full of people who slight their judgment; nay, who resist the most obvious pleas of their understanding. Their eyes, long shut to the light of truth, are unable to bear its rays; but they can endure the glimmerings of superstition, which plunges them in still darker obscurity.