Madam,

The passage in the letter from a pious and very excellent clergyman, as you style him, calls for no regard, either from your Ladyship, or me. More insignificant words cannot well be put together: “I think,” says he, “Mr. Law has gone half a bow shot too far.” If I have shot so far beyond, or beside the truth, he should have shown where, and why, and how. Without this, his words are but a random shot at nothing. His reason for this censure, is still worse, viz., “because I have touched the heart-string of all systematical divinity.” As grievous a charge, as if he had said, that I had shook the very foundation of every Babel of every country. For not a system of divinity, since systems were in being, whether popish, or Protestant, deserves a better name.

His next reason is, “because it should not be touched without skill from above.”

If this gentleman ever preaches from the pulpit, concerning the ways of God, and the doctrines of redemption, without skill from above, all he says, will be a whole bow-shot beside the matter.

If, therefore, in touching this point, I have touched that, which ought not to be touched without skill from above, I have taken no bolder a step, than he does, every time he mounts the pulpit, to give forth the doctrines of Christ.

His third reason is this, “I choose in my present ignorance, as touching the necessity and virtue of an outward atonement, to bow down before the awful subject.”