take a generous pleasure to espy the first rising beams of truth, though it be on the side of your opponent: endeavour to remove the little obscurities that hang about it, and suffer and encourage it to break out into open and convincing light; that while your opponent perhaps may gain the better of your reasonings, yet you yourself may triumph over error, and I am sure that is a much more valuable acquisition and victory.

.X. WATCH narrowly in every dispute, that your opponent does not lead you unwarily to grant some principle or proposition which will bring with it a fatal consequence, and lead you insensibly into his sentiment, though it be far astray from the truth: and by this wrong step you will be, as it were, plunged into dangerous errors before you are aware. Polonides in free conversation led Incauto to agree with him in this plain proposition, that the blessed God has too much justice in any case to punish * any being who is in itself innocent; till he not only allowed it with unthinking alacrity, but asserted it in most universal and unguarded terms. A little after Polonides came in discourse to commend the virtues, the innocence, and the piety of our blessed Saviour; and thence inferred it was impossible that God should ever punish so holy a person, who was never guilty of any crime then Incauto espied the snare, and found himself robbed and defrauded of the great doctrine of the atonement by the death of Christ, upon which he had placed his immortal hopes according to the gospel.

This taught him to bethink himself what a dangerous concession he had made in so universal a manner, that God would never punish any being who was innocent, and he saw it needful to recall his words, or to explain them better, by adding this restriction or limitation, viz. Unless this innocent being were some way involved in another's sin, or stood as a voluntary surety for the guilty: by this limitation he secured

• The word punish here signifies to bring fome natural evil upon a person on account of moral evil done.

secured the great and blessed doctrine of the sacrifice of Christ for the sins of men, and learnt to be more cautious in his concessions for time to come.

Two months ago Fatalio had almost tempted his friend Fidens to leave off prayer, and to abandon his dependence on the providence of God in the common affairs of life, by obtaining of him a concession of the like kind. Is it not evident to reason, says Fatalio, that God's immense scheme of transactions in the universe was contrived and determined long before you and I were born? Can you imagine, my dear Fidens, that the blessed God changes his original contrivances, and makes new interruptions in the course of them, so often as you and I want his aid, to prevent the little accidents of life, or to guard us from them? Can you suffer yourself to be persuaded that the great Creator of this world takes care to support a bridge which was quite rotten, and to make it stand firm a few minutes longer till you have rode over it? Or will he uphold a falling tower while we two were passing by it, that such worms as you and I are might escape the ruin?

But you say you prayed for his protection in the morning, and he certainly hears prayer. I grant he knows it; but are you so fond and weak, said he, as to suppose that the universal Lord of all had such a regard to a word or two of your breath, as to make alterations in his own eternal scheme upon that account? Nor is there any other way whereby his providence can preserve you in answer to prayer, but by creating such perpetual interruptions and changes in his own conduct according to your daily behaviour.

I acknowledge, says Fidens, there is no other way to secure the doctrine of divine Providence in all these common affairs; and therefore I begin to doubt whether God does or ever will exert himself so particularly in our little con

cerns.

Have a care, good Fidens, that you yield not too far: take heed lest you have granted too much to Fatalio. Pray

let

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let me ask of you, Could not the great God, who grasps and surveys all future and distant things in one single view, could not he from the beginning foresee your morning prayer for his protection, and appoint all second causes to concur for the support of that crazy bridge, or to make that old tower stand firm till you had escaped the danger? Or ' could not he cause all the mediums to work so as to make it fall before you come near it? Can he not appoint all his own transactions in the universe, and every event in the natural world, in a way of perfect correspondence with his own fore-knowledge of all the events, actions, and appearances of the moral world in every part of it? Can he not direct every thing in nature, which is but his servant, to act in perfect agreement with his eternal prescience of our sins or of our piety? And hereby all the glory of Providence, and our necessary dependence upon it by faith and prayer, are as well secured as if he interposed to alter his own scheme every moment.

Let me ask again, Did not he in his own counsels or decrees appoint thunders and lightnings, and earthquakes, to burn up and destroy Sodom and Gomorrah, and turn them into a dead sea, just at the time when the iniquities of those cities were raised to their supreme height? Did he not ordain the fountains of the deep to be broken up, and overwhelming rains to fall down from heaven, just when a guilty world deserved to be drowned; while he took care of the security of righteous Noah, by an ark which should float upon that very deluge of waters? Thus he can punish the criminal when he pleases, and reward the devout worshipper in the proper season, by his original and eternal schemes of appointment, as well as if he interposed every moment anew. Take heed, Fidens, that you be not tempted away by such sophisms of Fatalio to with-hold prayer from God, and to renounce your faith in his providence.

Remember this short and plain caution of the subtile errors of men. Let a snake but once thrust in his head at some small unguarded fold of your garment, and he will in

sensibly

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sensibly and unavoidably wind his whole body into your bosom, and give you a pernicious wound.

XI. On the other hand, when you have found your opponent make any such concession as may turn to your real advantage in maintaining the truth, be wise and watchful to observe it, and make a happy improvement of it. Rhapsodus has taken a great deal of pains to detract from the honour of Christianity, by sly insinuations that the sacred writers are perpetually promoting virtue and piety by promises and threatenings; whereas neither the fear of future punishment, nor the hope of future reward, can possibly be called good affections, or such as are the acknowledged springs and sources of all actions truly good. He adds further, that this fear, or this hope, cannot consist in reality with virtue or goodness, if it either stands as essential to any moral performance, or as a considerable motive to any good action and thus he would fain lead Christians to be ashamed of the gospel of Christ, because of its future and eternal promises and threatenings, as being inconsistent with his notion of virtue; for he supposes virtue should be so beloved and practised for the sake of its own beauty and loveliness, that all other motives arising from rewards or punishments, fear or hope, do really take away just so much from the very nature of virtue as their influence reaches to: and no part of those good practices are really valuable, but what arises from the mere love of virtue itself, without any regard to punishment or reward.

But observe in two pages afterwards, he grants that this principle of fear of future punishment, and hope of future reward, how mercenary and servile soever it may be accounted, is yet, in many circumstances, a great advantage, security, and support to virtue; especially where there is danger of the violence of rage or lust, or any counter-working passion to control and overcome the good affections of the mind.

Now the rule and the practice of Christianity, or the gospel, as it is closely connected with future rewards and

punishments,

punishments, may be well supported by this concession. Pray, Rhapsodus, tell me, if every man in this present life, by the violence of some counter-working passion, may not have his good affections to virtue controlled or overcome? May not therefore his eternal fears and hopes be a great advantage, security, and support to virtue in so dangerous a state and situation, as our journey through this world towards a better? And this is all that the defence of Christianity necessarily requires.

And yet further let me ask our rhapsodist, if you have nothing else, sir, but the beauty, and excellency, and loveliness of virtue to preach and flourish upon, before such sorry and degenerate creatures as the bulk of mankind are, and you have no future rewards or punishments with which to address their hopes and fears, how many of these vicious wretches will you ever reclaim from all their varieties 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 pięty 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