PRIESTLEY, Joseph.

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Letters to Mr. Volney, Occasioned by a Work of his Entitled Ruins, and by his Letter to the Author. First edition. Part of Priestley's continuing campaign against what he saw as atheistic philosophy, published while in self-imposed exile in Philadelphia after fleeing Britain following the Priestley Riots of 1791 and continued government persecution. The pamphlet is directed against the arguments put forth by Constantin Volney in his Ruins of Empires, published in 1791, which predicted the eventual fusion of all religions, and placed Jesus as no more a historical personage than Adonis or Osiris, arguments which Priestley rejected. Priestley had first criticized Volney in the 1797 expanded edition of Observations on the Increase of Infidelity. Volney published a rebuttal the same year, with this being Priestley's counter rebuttal. Priestley writes that if Volney dislikes religious controversy, he should not provoke it, and challenges him to justify conflating the God of Moses with the pagan gods.

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