It has long been a subject of regret that we should have so few remains of so great a writer as the author of the &ldquoAnalogy,&rdquo not only the greatest thinker of his day, but one almost equally remarkable for his personal religion and amiability.
The few fragments and letters which remain unpublished, derive from this circumstance a value wholly incommensurate with their extent, though, as to the few I have been able to recover, they seem to me worthy of notice even for their own sake.
There can, I suppose, be no doubt but that many letters on subjects connected with their common pursuit,&mdashthe defence of religion by rational arguments,&mdashmust have passed between Dr. Clarke and the &ldquoGentleman in Gloucestershire,&rdquo even up to the time of the former&rsquos decease and the specimen I am now able to exhibit certainly excites a wish that one could recover more of a series which it is most likely that Dr. Clarke at least carefully preserved. The three letters now printed were all addressed to p. 4Dr. Clarke the first and last, though little known, were published many years ago in the European Magazine.
The second and third Fragments are printed as they were written, having apparently been noted down from time to time as the ideas occurred to their author thus at the end of the first paragraph of the third Fragment, the word &ldquodirection&rdquo was originally written &ldquoadvice,&rdquo but was subsequently altered in a different ink, being the same with that in which the sentences immediately following were written. I have not thought myself at liberty to make any attempt to reduce these Fragments to better consistency indeed, their present disordered state seems to me rather to add to their interest, as showing the mode in which the stones were gathered for building up such works as the &ldquoAnalogy&rdquo and the &ldquoSermons.&rdquo It will be observed that I have found a difficulty in reading the last part of the third Fragment, and I am by no means sure that I have quite hit the sense intended I should like it to apply either to the Cross set up at Bristol, or to the famous Charge delivered at Durham.
