Besides, when your own spirits are a little disturbed, and your wrath is awakened, this naturally kindles the same fire in your correspondent, and prevents him from taking in your ideas were they never so clear; for his passions are engaged all on a sudden for the defence of his own mistakes, and they combat as fiercely as yours do, which perhaps may be awakened on the side of truth. To provoke a person whom you would convince, not only rouses his anger, and sets it against your doctrine, but it directs its resentment against your person, as well as against all your instructions and arguments. You must treat an opponent like a friend, if you would persuade him to learn any thing from you; and this is one great reason why there is so little success on either side between two disputants or controversial writers, because they are so ready to interest their passions in the subject of contest, and thereby to prevent the mutual light that might be given and received on either side: ambition, indignation, and a professed zeal, reign on both sides: victory is the point designed, while truth is pretended; and truth oftentimes perishes in the fray, or retires from the field of battle: the combatants end just where they began, their understandings hold fast the same opinions, perhaps with this disadvantage, that they are a little more obstinate and rooted in them, without fresh reason; and they generally come off with the loss of temper and charity.

5. Neither attempt nor hope to convince a person of his mistake by any penal methods or severe usage. There is no light brought into the mind by all the fire and sword, and bloody persecutions that were ever introduced into the world. One would think both the princes, the priests, and the people, the learned and the unlearned, the great and the mean, should have all by this time seen the folly and madness of seeking to propagate the truth by the laws of cruelty: we compel a beast to the yoke by blows, because the ox and the ass have no understanding; but intellectual powers are not to be fettered and compelled at this rate. Men cannot believe what they will, nor change their religion and their sentiments as they please: they may be made hypocrites by the forms of severity, and constrained to profess what they do not be

lieve; they may be forced to comply with external practices and ceremonies contrary to their own consciences; but this can never please God, nor profit men.

6. In order to convince another, you should always make choice of those arguments that are best suited to his understanding and capacity, his genius and temper, his state, station, and circumstances. If I were to persuade a ploughman of the truth of any form of church government, it should not be attempted by the use of Greek and Latin fathers; but from the word of God, the light of nature, and the common reason of things.

7. Arguments should always be proposed in such a manner as may lead the mind onward to perceive the truth in a clear and agreeable light, as well as to constrain the assent by the power of reasoning. Clear ideas, in many cases, are as useful toward conviction as a wellformed and unanswerable syllogism.

8. Allow the person you desire to instruct a reasonable time to enter into the force of your arguments. When you have declared your own sentiments in the brightest manner of illustration, and enforced them with the most convincing arguments, you are not to suppose that your friends should immediately be convinced and receive the truth: habitude in a particular way of thinking, as well as in most other things, obtains the force of nature; and you cannot expect to wean a man from his accustomed errors but by slow degrees, and by his own assistance; entreat him, therefore, not to judge on the sudden, nor determine against you at once; but that he would please to review your scheme, reflect upon your arguments with all the impartiality he is capable of, and take time to think these over again at large; at least, that he would be disposed to hear you speak yet further on this subject without pain or aversion.

Address him therefore, in an obliging manner, and say, I am not so fond as to think I have placed the subject in such lights as to throw you on a sudden into a new track of thinking, or to make you immediately lay aside your present opinions or designs; all that I hope is, that some hint or other which I have given is capable of being improved by you to your own conviction, or possibly it

may lead you to such a train of reasoning as in time to effect a change in your thoughts. Which hint leads me to add,

9. Labour as much as possible to make the person you would teach his own instructor. Human nature may be allured by a secret pleasure and pride in its own reasoning, to seem to find out by itself the very thing that you would teach; and there are some persons that have so much of this natural bias toward self rooted in them, that they can never be convinced of a mistake by the plainest and strongest arguments to the contrary, though the demonstration glare in their faces; but they may be tempted, by such gentle insinuations, to follow a track of thought which you propose, till they have wound themselves out of their own error, and led themselves hereby into your own opinion, if you do but let it appear that they are under their own guidance rather than yours. And perhaps there is nothing which shows more dexterity of address than this secret influence over the minds of others, which they do not discern even while they fcllow it.

10. If you can gain the main point in question, be not very solicitous about the nicety with which it shall be expressed. Mankind is so vain a thing, that it is not willing to derive from another; and though it cannot have every thing from itself, yet it would seem at least to mingle something of its own with what it derives elsewhere therefore, when you have set your sentiment in the fullest light, and proved it in the most effectual manner, an opponent will bring in some frivolous and useless distinction, on purpose to change the form of words in the question, and acknowledge that he receives your proposition in such a sense, and in such a manner of expression, though he cannot receive it in your terms and phrases. Vanillus will confess he is now convinced that a man who behaves well in the state ought not to be punished for his religion, but yet he will not consent to allow an universal toleration of all religions which do not injure the state, which is the proposition I had been proving. Well, let Vanillus, therefore, use his own lan

guage; I am glad he is convinced of the truth; he shall have leave to dress it in his own way.

To these directions I shall add two remarks in the conclusion of this chapter, which would not so properly fall under the preceding directions.

I. Remark. When you have laboured to instruct a person in some controverted truth, and yet he retains some prejudice against it, so that he doth not yield to the convincing force of your arguments, you may sometimes have happy success in convincing him of that truth, by setting him to read a weak author who writes against it: a young reader will find such pleasure in being able to answer the arguments of the opposer, that he will drop his former prejudices against the truth, and yield to the power and evidence of your reason. I confess this looks like setting up one prejudice to overthrow another; but where prejudices cannot be fairly removed by the dint of reason, the wisest and the best of teachers will sometimes find it necessary to make a way for reason and truth to take place, by this contrast of prejudices.

II. Remark. When our design is to convince a whole family or community of persons of any mistake, and to lead them into any truth, we may justly suppose there are various reigning prejudices among them; and therefore it is not so safe to attempt, nor so easy to effect it, by addressing the whole number at once. Such a method has been often found to raise a sudden alarm, and has produced a violent opposition even to the most fair, pious, and useful proposal; so that he who made the motion could never carry his point.

We must therefore first make as sure as we can of the most intelligent and learned, at least the most leading persons amongst them, by addressing them apart prudently, and offering proper reasons, till they are convinced and engaged on the side of truth; and these may with more success apply themselves to others of the same community: yet the original proposer should not neglect to make a distinct application to all the rest, so far as circumstances admit.

Where a thing is to be determined by a number of

votes, he should labour to secure a good majority; and then take care that the most proper persons should move and argue the matter in public, lest it be quashed in the very first proposal by some prejudice against the proposer. So unhappily are our circumstances situated in this world, that if truth, and justice, and goodness, could put on human forms, and descend from heaven to propose the most divine and useful doctrines, and bring with them the clearest evidence, and publish them at once to a multitude whose prejudices are engaged against them, the proposal would be vain and fruitless, and would neither convince nor persuade; so necessary is it to join art and dexterity, together with the force of reason, to convince mankind of truth, unless we came furnished with miracles or omnipotence to create a conviction*.

CHAPTER IV.

OF AUTHORITY. OF THE ABUSE OF IT: AND OF ITS REAL AND PROPER USE AND SERVICE.

THE influence which other persons have upon our opinions is usually called authority. The power of it is so great and widely extensive, that there is scarce any person in the world entirely free from the impressions of it, even after their utmost watchfulness and care to avoid it. Our parents and tutors, yea our very nurses, determine a multitude of our sentiments; our friends, our neighbours, the custom of the country where we dwell, and the established opinions of mankind, form our belief: the great, the wise, the pious, the learned, and the ancient, the king, the priest, and the philosopher, are characters of mighty efficacy to persuade us to receive what they

* The conduct of Christ and his Apostles, armed as they were with supernatural powers, in the gradual openings of truths against which the minds of their disciples were strongly prejudiced, may not only secure such an address from the imputation of dishonest craft, but may demonstrate the expediency, and in some cases the necessity, of attending to it.