damnation upon their neighbours, without either justice or mercy; and when they pronounce sentences of divine wrath against supposed heretics, they add their own human fire and indignation. A dogmatist in religion is not a great way off from a bigot, and is in high danger of growing up to be a bloody persecutor.

XI. Though caution and slow assent will guard you against frequent mistakes and retractions; yet you should get humility and courage enough to retract any mistake, and confess an error: frequent changes are tokens of levity in our first determinations; yet you should never be too proud to change your opinion, nor frighted at the name of a changeling. Learn to scorn those vulgar bugbears, which confirm a foolish man in his old mistakes, for fear of being charged with inconstancy. I confess it is better not to judge, than judge falsely; it is wiser to withhold our assent till we see complete evidence; but if we have too suddenly given up our assent, as the wisest man does sometimes, if we have professed what we find afterwards to be false, we should never be ashamed nor afraid to renounce a mistake. That is a noble essay which is found among the occasional papers, courage the world to repractise retractations;" and I would recommend it to the perusal of every scholar and every Christian.

"to en

XII. He that would raise his judgment above the vulgar rank of mankind, and learn to pass a just sentence on persons and things, must take heed of a fanciful temper of mind, and a humorous conduct in his affairs. Fancy and humour, early and constantly indulged, may expect an old age overrun with follies.

The notion of a humourist is one that is greatly pleased, or greatly displeased with little things; who sets his heart much upon matters of very small importance; who has his will determined every day by trifles, his actions seldom directed by the reason and nature of things, and his passions frequently raised by things of little moment. Where this practice is allowed, it will insensibly warp the judgment to pronounce little things great, and tempt you to lay a great weight upon them. In short, this temper

will incline you to pass an unjust value on almost every thing that occurs; and every step you take in this path is just so far out of the way to wisdom.

XIII. For the same reason have a care of trifling with things important and momentous, or of sporting with things awful and sacred: do not indulge a spirit of ridicule, as some witty men do on all occasions and subjects. This will as unhappily bias the judgment on the other side, and incline you to pass a low esteem on the most valuable objects. Whatsoever evil habit we indulge in practice, it will insensibly obtain a power over our understanding, and betray us into many errors. Jocander is ready with his jest to answer every thing that he hears; he reads books in the same jovial humour, and has gotten the art of turning every thought and sentence into merriment. How many awkward and irregular judgments does this man pass upon solemn subjects, even when he designs to be grave and in earnest? His mirth and laughing humour is formed into habit and temper, and leads his understanding shamefully astray. You will see him wandering in pursuit of a gay flying feather, and he is drawn by a sort of ignis faluus into bogs and mire almost every day of his life.

XIV. Ever maintain a virtuous and pious frame of spirit: for an indulgence of vicious inclinations debases the understanding, and perverts the judgment. Whoredom and wine, and new wine, take away the heart and soul and reason of a man. Sensuality ruins the better faculties of the mind; an indulgence to appetite and passion enfeebles the powers of reason; it makes the judgment weak and susceptive of every falsehood, and especially of such mistakes as have a tendency towards the gratification of the animal; and it warps the soul aside strangely from that stedfast honesty and integrity that necessarily belongs to the pursuit of truth. It is the virtuous man who is in a fair way to wisdom. "God gives to those that are good in his sight wisdom, and knowledge, and joy." Eccles. ii. 26.

Piety towards God, as well as sobriety and virtue, are necessary qualifications to make a truly wise and judicious

man.

He that abandons religion must act in such a con

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tradiction to his own conscience and best judgment, that he abuses and spoils the faculty itself. It is thus in the nature of things, and it is thus by the righteous judgment of God: even the pretended sages among the heathens, who did not like to retain God in their knowledge, they were given up to a reprobate mind, is va ocv an undistinguishing or injudicious mind, so that they judged inconsistently, and practised mere absurdities, rà un àrýжOrτα, Rom. i. 28.

And it is the character of the slaves of antichrist, 2 Thess. ii. 10, &c. that those "who receive not the love of the truth were exposed to the power of diabolical sleights and lying wonders." When divine revelation shines and blazes in the face of men with glorious evidence, and they wink their eyes against it, the god of this world is suffered to blind them, even in the most obvious, common, and sensible things. The great God of Heaven, for this cause, sends them strong delusions, that they should believe a lie; and the nonsense of transubstantiation in the popish world, is a most glaring accomplishment of this prophecy, beyond even what could have been thought of or expected among creatures who pretend to reason.

XV. Watch against the pride of your own reason, and a vain conceit of your own intellectual powers, with the neglect of divine aid and blessing. Presume not upon great attainments in knowledge by your own self-sufficiency: those who trust to their own understandings entirely, are pronounced fools in the word of God; and it is the wisest of men gives them this character, "he that trusteth in his own heart is a fool," Prov. xxviii. 26. And the same divine writer advises us to "trust in the Lord with all our heart, and not to lean to our understandings, nor to be wise in our own eyes," chap. iii. 5. 7.

Those who, with a neglect of religion and dependence on God, apply themselves to search out every article in the things of God by the mere dint of their own reason, have been suffered to run into wild excesses of foolery, and strange extravagance of opinions. Every one who pursues this vain course, and will not ask for the conduct of God in the study of religion, has just reason to fear he

shall be left of God, and given up a prey to a thousand prejudices; that he shall be consigned over to the follies of his own heart, and pursue his own temporal and eternal ruin. And even in common studies we should, by humility and dependence, engage the God of truth on our side.

XVI. Offer up therefore your daily requests to God, the father of lights, that he would bless all your attempts and labours in reading, study, and conversation. Think with yourself how easily and how insensibly, by one turn of thought, he can lead you into a large scene of useful ideas: he can teach you to lay hold on a clue which may guide your thoughts with safety and ease through all the difficulties of an intricate subject. Think how easily the Author of your beings can direct your motions by his providence, so that the glance of an eye, or a word striking the ear, or a sudden turn of the fancy, shall conduct you to a train of happy sentiments. By his secret and supreme method of government, he can draw you to read such a treatise, or converse with such a person, who may give you more light into some deep subject in an hour, than you could obtain by a month of your own solitary labour.

Think with yourself with how much ease the God of spirits can cast into your minds some useful suggestion, and give a happy turn to your own thoughts, or the thoughts of those with whom you converse, whence you may derive unspeakable light and satisfaction, in a matter that has long puzzled and entangled you: he can show you a path which the vulture's eye has not seen, and lead you by some unknown gate or portal, out of a wilderness and labyrinth of difficulties, wherein you have been long wandering.

Implore constantly his divine grace to point your inclination to proper studies, and to fix your heart there. He can keep off temptations on the right hand, and on the left, both by the course of his providence, and by the secret and insensible intimations of his spirit. He can guard your understandings from every evil influence of error, and secure you from the danger of evil books and

men, which might otherwise have a fatal effect, and lead you into pernicious mistakes.

Nor let this sort of advice fall under the censure of the godless and profane, as a mere piece of bigotry or enthusiasm, derived from faith and the Bible: for the reasons which I have given to support this pious practice, of invoking the blessing of God on our studies, are derived from the light of nature as well as revelation. He that made our souls, and is the Father of spirits, shall he not be supposed to have a most friendly influence toward the instruction and government of them? The Author of our rational powers can involve them in darkness when he pleases, by a sudden distemper; or he can abandon them to wander into dark and foolish opinions, when they are filled with a vain conceit of their own light. He expects to be acknowledged in the common affairs of life; and he does as certainly expect it in the superior operations of the mind, and in the search of knowledge and truth. The very Greek heathens, by the light of reason, were taught to say, 'Ex Aios dfxómegla, and the Latins, A Jove principium Muse.' In works of learning they thought it necessary to begin with God. Even the poets call upon the muse as a goddess to assist them in their compositions.

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The first lines of Homer, in his Iliad, and his Odyssey, the first line of Musæus, in his song of Hero and Leander, the beginning of Hesiod, in his poem of Weeks and Days, and several others, furnish us with sufficient examples of this kind; nor does Ovid leave out this piece of devotion, as he begins his stories of the Metamorphosis. Christianity so much the more obliges us, by the precepts of scripture, to invoke the assistance of the true God in all our labours of the mind, for the improvement of ourselves and others. Bishop Saunderson says, that study without prayer is atheism, as well as that prayer without study is presumption. And we are still more abundantly encouraged by the testimony of those who have acknowledged, from their own experience, that sincere prayer was no hindrance to their studies: they have gotten more knowledge sometimes upon their knees, than by