wretches will you ever reclaim from all their variety of profaneness, intemperance, and madness? How many have you ever actually reclaimed by this smooth soft method, and these fine words? What has all that reasoning and rhetoric done which have been displayed by your predecessors the Heathen moralists, upon this excellency and beauty of virtue? What has it been able to do towards the reforming of a sinful world? Perhaps now and then a man of better natural mould has been a little refined, and perhaps also there may have been here and there a man restrained or recovered from injustice and knavery, from drunkenness and lewdness, and vile debaucheries, by this fair reasoning and philosophy: but have the passions of revenge and envy, of ambition and pride, and the inward secret vices of the mind been mortified merely by this philosophical language? Have any of these men been made new creatures, men of real piety and love to God?

Go dress up all the virtues of human nature in all the beauties of your oratory, and declaim aloud on the praise of social virtue, and the amiable qualities of goodness, till your heart or your lungs ache, among the looser herds of mankind, and you will ever find, as your Heathen fathers have done before, that the wild passions and appetites of men are too violent to be restrained by such mild and silken language. You may as well build up a fence of straw and feathers to resist a cannon ball, or try to quench a flaming granado with a shell of fair water, as hope to succeed in these attempts. But an eternal Heaven and an eternal Hell carry divine force and power with them: this doctrine, from the mouth of Christian preachers, has begun the reformation of multitudes; this gospel has recovered thousands among the nations from iniquity and death. They have been awakened by these awful scenes to begin religion, and afterwards their virtue has improved itself into superior and more

refined principles and habits by divine grace, and risen to high and eminent degrees, though not to a consummate state. The blessed God knows human nature much better than Rhapsodus doth, and has throughout his Word appointed a more proper and more effectual method of address to it by the passions of hope and fear, by punishments and rewards. If you read on four pages further in these writings, you will find the author makes another concession. He allows that-the master of a family using proper rewards and gentle punishments towards his children, teaches them goodness, and by this help instructs them in a virtue which afterwards they practise upon other grounds, and without thinking of a penalty or a bribe: and this, says he, is what we call a liberal education and a liberal service.

This new concession of that author may also be very happily improved in favour of Christianity. What are the best of men in this life? They are by no means perfect in virtue: we are all but children here under the great master of the family, and he is pleased by hopes and fears, by mercies and corrections, to instruct us in virtue, and to conduct us onward towards the sublimer and more perfect practice of it in the future world, where it shall be performed, as in his own language, perhaps-without thinking of penalties or bribes. And since he hath allowed that this conduct may be called a liberal education, and a liberal service, let Christianity then be indulged the title of a liberal education also, and it is admirably fitted for such frail and sinful creatures, while they are training up towards the sublimer virtues of the heavenly state.

XII. When you are engaged in a dispute with a person of very different principles from yourself, and you cannot find any ready way to prevail with him to embrace the truth by principles which you both freely acknowledge, you may fairly make use of his own principles to shew him his mistake, and thus convince or silence him from his own concessions.

If your opponent should be a Stoic philosopher or a Jew, you may pursue your argument in defence of some Christian doctrine or duty against such a disputant, by axioms or laws borrowed either from Zeno or Moses. And though you do not enter into the inquiry how many of the laws of Moses are abrogated, or whether Zeno was right or wrong in his philosophy, yet if from the principles and concessions of your opponent, you can support your argument for the gospel of Christ, this has been. always counted a fair treatment of an adversary, and it is called argumentum ad hominem, or ratio ex concessis. St. Paul sometimes makes use of this sort of disputation, when he talks with Jews or Heathen philosophers; and at least he silences if not convinces them which is sometimes necessary. to be done against an obstinate and clamorous adversary, that just honour might be paid to truths which he knew were divine, and that the only true doctrine of salvation might be confirmed and propagated among sinful and dying men.

XIII. Yet great care must be taken, lest your debates break in upon your passions, and awaken them to take part in the controversy. When the opponent pushes hard, and gives just and mortal wounds to our own opinions, our passions are very apt to feel the strokes, and to rise in resentment and defence. Self is so mingled with the sentiments which we have chosen, and has such a tender feeling of all the opposition which is made to them, that personal brawls are very ready to come in as seconds, to succeed and finish the dispute of opinions. Then noise, and clamour, and folly, appear in all their shapes, and chase reason and truth out of sight.

How unhappy is the case of frail and wretched mankind in this dark or dusky state of strong passion and glimmering reason? How ready are we, when our passions are engaged in the dispute, to consider more what loads of nonsense and reproach

we can lay upon our opponent, than what reason and truth require in the controversy itself? Dismal are the consequences mankind are too often involved in by this evil principle; it is this common and dangerous practice that carries the heart aside from all that is fair and honest in our search after truth, or the propagation of it in the world. One would wish from one's very soul, that none of the Christian fathers had been guilty of such follies as these.

But St. Jerome fairly confesses this evil principle, in his apology for himself to Pammachius, 'that he had not so much regarded what was exactly to be spoken in the controversy he had in hand, as what was fit to lay a load on Jovinian.' And, indeed, I fear this was the vile custom of many of the writers even in the church affairs of those times. But it will be a double scandal upon us, in our more enlightened age, if we will allow ourselves in a conduct so criminal and dishonest. Happy souls, who keep such a sacred dominion over their inferior and animal powers, and all the influences of pride and secular interest, that the sensitive tumults, or these vicious influences, never rise to disturb the superior and better operations of the reasoning mind!

XIV. These general directions are necessary, or at least useful, in all debates whatsoever, whether they arise in occasional conversation, or are appointed at any certain time or place; whether they are managed with or without any formal rules to govern them. But there are three sorts of disputation in which there are some forms and orders observed, and which are distinguished by these three names, viz. Socratic, Forensic, and Academic, i. e. the disputes of the schools.

Concerning each of these it may not be improper to discourse a little, and give a few particular di rections or remarks about them.

SOCRATICAL WAY OF DISPUTATION. 113

CHAP. XI.

The Socratical Way of Disputation.

I. THIS method of dispute derives its name from Socrates, by whom it was practised, and by other philosophers in his age, long before Aristotle invented the particular forms of syllogism in mood and figure, which are now used in scholastic dis putations.

II. The Socratical way is managed by questions and answers in such a manner as this, viz. If I would lead a person into the belief of a heaven or hell, or a future state of rewards and punishments, I might begin in some such manner of inquiry, and suppose the most obvious and easy answers.

Q. Does not God govern the world?

A. Surely he that made it governs it.

Q. Is not God both a good and a righteous governor ?

A. Both these characters doubtless belong to him. Q. What is the true notion of a good and righte ous governor ?

A. That he punishes the wicked, and rewards the good.

Q. Are the good always rewarded in this life? A. No surely; for many virtuous men are miserable here, and greatly afflicted.

Q. Are the wicked always punished in this life? A. No certainly; for many of them live without sorrow, and some of the vilest of men are often raised to great riches and honour.

Q. Wherein then doth God make it appear that he is good and righteous ?

A. I own there is but little appearance of it on earth.

Q. Will there not be a time then when the tables