Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1815 edition. Excerpt: ... wholly wanting in christian piety, ' or is "without christian virtue." Neither of these things is either affirmed or implied in any passage of mine; hut the terms used by me, and the entire connexion, are particularly and pointedly guarded against such a construction. Had not you said it, I should certainly have thought that the person who could say, that.the interpretation which you have given is "the natural meaning of my words," "that in giving such an interpretation no Violence is put upon my language," and "that no other sense offers itself to an unprejudiced mind," really had not "ability to decide on the obvious import of a letter written in our native tongue," and ought to be sent to school, to learn the very rudiments of grammar and logick. This remark I apply to all the passages which you have cited. Taken severally or collectively, in a detached state or in their respective conexions, they neither naturally express, nor by all the torture to which you have put, or can put them, can they be made to yield the sense which you have so resolutely attempted to fasten upon them. Had it, however, been otherwise; had my expressions been such as easily to admit, or even naturally to convey the sense of your statement; yet, if they would bear another construction, and I had explicitly said that such was not my meaning, it might have been compatible with the laws of common courtesy for my disavowal to have been candidly accepted. It has been thought allowable in debate, for a person, when misunderstood, to explain; and right that his explanation should be admitted. But this privilege has not been allowed to me. I was misunderstood, --certainly misrepresented: and though I thought my language sufficiently plain, yet I went, in my..."
