Page:Letters of the Late Lord Lyttleton.djvu/173

 by using a simplicity of definition, a perspicuity of expression, and, where the barrenness of language denies the immediate term, a neatness of periphrase which not only invites but creates conception.

You are pleased, in your last letter, to charge the present age with the crime of skepticism; and you have abandoned yourself to a more than common energy on the subject. To tell you the truth, I do not very clearly perceive the tendency of your accusation. If it alludes to religion, you would, I think, find some difficulty to maintain your position: if it should glance at politicks, our national submission is certainly against you: or, leaving the higher concerns of the world, if you should apply your assertion to the ordinary intercourse and common transactions between man and man, you are truly unfortunate, as an extreme cullibility seems to be one of the leading features of the present times. The age in which we live does not possess so great a share, as former centuries, of that faith which is able to remove mountains: blind credulity, by the insults it so long offered to reason, has in a great measure destroyed itself, or is rather become modified into that sobriety of belief which is con- x