...transformation of religious and political life, achieved through the progress of the intellect. The reformers, 'laying gunpowder, grain by grain, under the old building of error and superstition', would overturn 'in a moment . . . that edif1ce, the erection of which has been the work of ages' (Priestley...

...truth, held by himself and his fellow Dissenters, to the force of an explosion : ' We are, as it were, laying gunpowder, grain by grain, under the old building...and superstition, which a single spark may hereafter inflame, so as to produce an instantaneous explosion.' For this he was nicknamed by his opponent pamphleteers,...