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according to our own notions of their force, and from thence expect the immediate conviction of others; but we should regard how they are likely to be received by the persons we converse with; and thus manage our reasoning, as the nurse gives a child drink by slow degrees, lest the infant should be choked, or return it all back again, if poured in too hastily. If your wine be never so good, and you are never so liberal in bestowing it on your neighbour, yet if his bottle into which you attempt to pour it with freedom has a narrow mouth, you will sooner overset the bottle than fill it with wine.

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Overhastiness and vehemence in arguing is oftentimes the effect of pride; it blunts the poignancy of the_argument, breaks its force, and disappoints the end. If you were to convince a person of the falsehood of the doctrine of transubstantiation, and you take up the consecrated bread before him and say, "You may see, and taste, and "feel, this is nothing but bread; therefore while you as"sert that God commands you to believe it is not bread, you most wickedly accuse God of commanding you to "tell a lie:" this sort of language would only raise the indignation of the person against you, instead of making any impressions upon him. He will not so much as think at all on the arguments you have brought, but he rages at you as a profane wretch, setting up your sense and reason above sacred authority; so that though what you affirm is a truth of great evidence, yet you lose the benefit of your whole argument by an ill management, and the unseasonable use of it.

II. We may expressly allow and indulge those prejudices for a season which seem to stand against the truth, and endeavour to introduce the truth by degrees, while those prejudices are expressly allowed, till by degrees the advanced truth may of itself wear out the prejudice. Thus God himself dealt with his own people the Jews after the resurrection of Christ; for though from the following days of Pentecost, when the gospel was proclaimed and confirmed at Jerusalem, the Jewish ceremonies began to be void and ineffectual for any divine purpose, yet the Jews who received Christ the Messiah were permitted to cir

cumcise their children, and to practise many Levitical forms, till that constitution, which then waxed old, should in time vanish away.

Where the prejudices of mankind cannot be conquered at once, but they will rise up in arms against the evidence of truth, there we must make some allowances, and yield to them for the present, as far as we can safely do it without real injury to truth: and if we would have any success in our endeavours to convince the world, we must practise this complaisance for the benefit of mankind.

Take a student who has deeply imbibed the principles of the Peripatetics, and imagines certain immaterial beings called substantial forms to inhabit every herb, flower, mineral, metal, fire, water, &c. and to be the spring of all its properties and operations; or take a Platonist, who believes an anima mundi, an universal soul of the world to pervade all bodies, to act in and by them according to their nature, and indeed to give them their nature and their special powers; perhaps it may be very hard to convince these persons by argument, and constrain them to yield up these fancies. Well then, let the one believe his universal soul, and the other go on with his notion of substantial forms, and at the same time teach them how by certain original laws of motion, and the various sizes, shapes, and situations of the parts of matter, allowing a continued divine concourse in and with all, the several appearances in nature may be solved, and the variety of effects produced, according to the corpuscular philosophy. improved by Descartes, Mr. Boyle, and Sir Isaac Newton; and when they have attained a degree of skill in this science, they will see these airy notions of theirs, these imaginary powers, to be so useless and unnecessary, that they will drop them of their own accord: the Peripatetic forms will vanish from the mind like a dream, and the Platonic soul of the world will expire.

Or suppose a young philosopher under a powerful persuasion that there is nothing but what has three dimensions, length, breadth, and thickness, and consequently that every finite being has a figure or shape, (for shape is but the term and boundary of dimension:) suppose this person, through the long prejudices of sense and imagina

tion, cannot be easily brought to conceive of a spirit or a thinking being without shape and dimensions; let him then continue to conceive a spirit with dimensions; but be sure i all his conceptions to retain the idea of cogitation, or a power of thinking, and thus proceed to philosophise upon the subject. Perhaps in a little time he will find that length, breadth, and shape, have no share in any of the actions of a spirit, and that he can manifest all the properties and relations of such a being, with all its operations of sensation, volition, &c. to be as well performed without the use of this supposed shape or these dimensions; and that all these operations and these attributes may be ascribed to a spirit considered merely as power of thinking. And when he further conceives that God the infinite Spirit is an almighty, self-existent, thinking power, without shape and dimensions of length, breadth, and depth, he may then suppose the human spirit may be an inferior self-subsisting power of thought; and he may be inclined to drop the ideas of dimension and figure by degrees, when he sees and is convinced they do nothing toward thinking, nor are they necessary to assist or explain the operations or properties of a spirit.

I may give another instance of the same practice, where there is a prejudicate fondness of particular words and phrases. Suppose a man is educated in an unhappy form of speech, whereby he explains some great doctrine of the gospel, and by the means of this phrase he has imbibed a very false idea of that doctrine: yet he is so bigoted to his form of words, that he imagines if those words are omitted the doctrine is lost. Now if I cannot possibly persuade him to part with his improper terms, I will indulge them a little, and try to explain them into a scriptural sense, rather than let him go on in his mistaken ideas.

Credonius believes that Christ descended into hell: I think the word hell, as now commonly understood, is very improper here; but since the bulk of Christians, and Credonius amongst them, will by no means part with the word out of their English creed, I will explain the word hell to signify the state of the dead, or the separate state of souls; and thus lead my friend into more just ideas of the truth, namely, that the soul of Christ existed three

days in the state of separation from his body, or was in the invisible world, which might be originally called hell in English as well as hades in Greek.

Anilla has been bred a papist all her days, and though she does not know much of religion, yet she resolves never to part from the Roman Catholic faith, and is obstinately bent against a change. Now I cannot think it unlawful to teach her the true christian, that is, the protestant religion out of the epistle to the Romans, and show her that the same doctrine is contained in the catholic epistles of St. Peter, James, and Jude; and thus let her live and die a good christian in the belief of the religion I teach her out of the New Testament, while she imagines she is a Roman Catholic still, because she finds the doctrines she is taught in the catholic epistles and in that to the Romans.

I grant it is most proper there should be different words (as far as possible) applied to different ideas, and this rule should never be dispensed with, if we had tɔ do only with the reason of mankind; but their various prejudices and zeal for some party phrases sometimes make it necessary that we should lead them into truth under the covert of their own beloved forms of speech, rather than permit them to live and die obstinate and unconvincible in any dangerous mistake: whereas an attempt to deprive them of their old-established words would raise such a tumult within them, as to render their conviction hopeless.

III. Sometimes we may make use of the very prejudices under which a person labours in order to convince him of some particular truth, and argue with him upon his own professed principles as though they were true. This is called Argumentum ad hominem, and is another way of dealing with the prejudices of men.

Suppose a Jew lies sick of a fever, and is forbid flesh by his physician; but hearing that rabbits were provided for the dinner of the family, desired earnestly to eat of them; and suppose he became impatient because his physician did not permit him, and he insisted upon it that it could do him no hurt. Surely rather than let him persist in that fancy and that desire, to the danger of his life, I would tell him that those animals were strangled, which

sort of food was forbidden by the Jewish law, though I myself may believe that law is now abolished.

In the same manner was Tenerilla persuaded to let Damon her husband prosecute a thief who broke open their house on a Sunday. At first she abhorred the thoughts of it, and refused it utterly, because if the thief were condemned according to the English law he must be hanged, whereas (said she) the law of God, in the writings of Moses, does not appoint death to be the punishment of such criminals, but tells us, that a thief shall be sold for his theft, Exod. xxii. 3. But when Damon could no otherwise convince her that the thief ought to be prosecuted, he put her in mind that the theft was committed on Sunday morning; now the same law of Moses requires that the sabbath-breaker shall surely be put to death, Exod. xxi. 15. Numb. xv. 35. This argument prevailed with Tenerilla, and she consented to the prosecution.

Encrates used the same means of conviction when he saw a Mahometan drink wine to excess, and heard him maintain the lawfulness and pleasure of drunkenness : Encrates reminded him that his own prophet Mahomet had utterly forbidden all wine to his followers, and the good man restrained his vicious appetite by this superstition, when he could no otherwise convince him that drunkenness was unlawful, nor withhold him from excess.

Where we find any person obstinately persisting in a mistake in opposition to all reason, especially if the mistake be very injurious or pernicious, and we know this person will hearken to the sentiment or authority of some favourite name, it is needful sometimes to use the opinion and authority of that favourite person, since that is likely to be regarded much more than reason. I confess I am almost ashamed to speak of using any influence of authority while I would teach the art of reasoning. But in some cases it is better that poor, silly, perverse, obstinate creatures should be persuaded to judge and act aright, by a veneration for the sense of others, than to be left to wander in pernicious errors, and continue deaf to all argument, and blind to all evidence. They are but children of a larger size, and since they persist all their lives in

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