the progress of his friend's opinions with every mark of regret. He even
showed me letters that had passed between them, and in which every horrid
and immoral tenet was defended by one and denied by the other. These
letters showed Colden as the advocate of suicide; a scoffer at promises;
the despiser of revelation, of Providence and a future state; an opponent
of marriage, and as one who denied (shocking!) that any thing but mere
habit and positive law stood in the way of marriage, nay, of intercourse
without marriage, between brother and sister, parent and child!

You may readily believe that I did not credit such things on slight
evidence. I did not rely on Thomson's mere words, solemn and unaffected as
these were; nothing but Colden's handwriting could in such a case, be
credited.

To say truth, I should not be much surprised had I heard of Colden, as
of a youth whose notions on moral and religious topics were, in some
degree, unsettled; that, in the fervour and giddiness incident to his age,
he had not tamed his mind to investigation; had not subdued his heart to
regular and devout thoughts; that his passions or his indolence had made
the truths of religion somewhat obscure, and shut them out, not properly
from his conviction, but only from his attention.

I expected to find, united with this vague and dubious state of mind,
tokens of the influence of a pious education; a reverence,--at least, for
those sacred precepts on which the happiness of men rests, and at least a
practical observance of that which, if not fully admitted by his
understanding, was yet very far from having been rejected by it.

But widely and deplorably different was Colden's case. A most
fascinating book [Footnote: Godwin's Political Justice.] fell at length