Excerpt from Letters From Percy Bysshe Shelley to Elizabeth Hitchener, Vol. 1 of 2 Surely, if a person obstinately wills to believe, - determines spite of him self, spite of the refusal of that part of mind to admit the assent in which only can assent rationally be centred, - wills thus to put himself under the influence of passion, -all reasoning is superfluous. Yet I do not suppose that you act thus (for action it must be called, as belief is a passion); since the religion does not hold out high morality as an apology for an aberration from reason. In this latter case, reason might sanction the aberration, and fancy become but an auxiliary to its influence. Dismiss, then, Christianity, in which no arguments can enter. Passion and Reason are in their natures opposite, Christianity is the former; and Deism (for we are now no further) is the latter. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.