To be a philosophical sceptic is, in a man of letters, the first and most essential to being a sound, believing Christian.

All power, even the most despotic, rests ultimately on opinion.

The Christian religion not only was at first attended with miracles, but even at this day cannot be believed by any reasonable person without one.

The supposition that the future resembles the past, is not founded on arguments of any kind, but is derived entirely from habit.

I have written on all sorts of subjects... yet I have no enemies; except indeed all the Whigs, all the Tories, and all the Christians.

There is not to be found, in all history, any miracle attested by a sufficient number of men, of such unquestioned good sense, education and learning, as to secure us against all delusion in themselves.

And whoever is moved by Faith to assent to it, is conscious of a continued miracle in his own person, which subverts all the principles of his understanding, and gives him a determination to believe what is most contrary to custom and experience.