"I consider myself as very much honoured in being thought worthy of an answer by a person of so much merit; and as I find that the public does you justice with regard to the ingenuity and good composition of your piece, I hope you will have no reason to repent engaging with an antagonist, whom, perhaps, in strictness, you might have ventured to neglect. I own to you, that I never felt so violent an inclination to defend myself as at present, when I am thus fairly challenged by you, and I think I could find something specious at least to urge in my defence; but as I had fixed a resolution, in the beginning of my life, always to leave the public to judge between my adversaries and me, without making any reply, I must adhere inviolably to this resolution, otherwise my silence on any future occasion would be construed an inability to answer, and would be matter of triumph against me."[119:1]
He then, in the passage already cited,[119:2] describes the occasion on which the "Theory of Miracles" was suggested to him.
In answer to this, there is a letter by Campbell, in which he endeavours to rival his opponent in candour, politeness, and gentlemanlike feeling. The happy courtesy with which he apologizes for the occasionally irascible tone of his essay, shows that the retired northern divine possessed in no small degree the qualities that might have adorned a more showy station.
The testimony you are pleased to give in favour of my performance, is an honour of which I should be entirely unworthy, were I not sensible of the uncommon generosity you have shown in giving it. Ever since I was acquainted with your works, your talents as a writer have, notwithstanding some differences in abstract principles, extorted from me the highest veneration. But I could scarce have thought that, in spite of differences of a more interesting nature, even such as regard morals and religion, you could ever force me to love and honour you as a man. Yet no religious prejudices (as you would probably term them,) can hinder me from doing justice to that goodness and candour, which appear in every line of your letter.
It would be in vain to dissemble the pleasure which it gives me, that I am thought to have acquitted myself tolerably in a dispute with an author of such acknowledged merit. At the same time, it gives me real pain, that any symptoms of vehemence (which are not so easily avoided in disputation as one would imagine,) should give so generous an adversary the least ground of complaint. You have (if I remember right, for I have not the book here,) in the appendix to the third volume of your "Treatise on Human Nature," apologized for using sometimes the expressions--'Tis certain, 'Tis evident, and the like. These, you observe, were in a manner forced from you by the strong, though transient light in which a particular object then appeared, and are therefore not to be considered as at all inconsistent with the general principles of scepticism which are maintained in the Treatise. My apology is somewhat similar. There is in all controversy a struggle for victory, which I may say compels one to take every fair advantage that either the sentiments or the words of an antagonist present him with. But the appearances of asperity or raillery, which one will be thereby necessarily drawn into, ought not to be constructed as in the least affecting the habitual good opinion, or even the high esteem, which the writer may nevertheless entertain of his adversary.