silence and solitude; where you may be most free from interruption and avocation.

When you have a mind to improve a single thought, or to be clear in any particular point, do not leave it until you are master of it. View it in every light. Try how many ways you can express it, and which is the shortest and best. Would you enlarge upon it; hunt it down from author to author; some of which will suggest hints concerning it, which perhaps never occurred to you before; and give every circumstance its weight. Thus by being master of every subject as you proceed, though you make but a small progress in reading, you will make a speedy one in useful knowledge. To leave matters undetermined, and the mind unsatisfied in what we study, is but to multiply half notions, introduce confusion, and is the way to make a pedant, but not a scholar.

Go to the fountain-head. Read original authors, rather than those who translate or retail their thoughts. It will give you more satisfaction, more certainty, more judgment, and more confidence, when those authors are the subjects of conversation, than you can have by taking your knowledge of them at second-hand. It is trusting to translations, quotations, and epitomes, that makes so many half scholars so impertinently wise.

Finally. Be patient of labour. The more you accustom yourself to laborious thinking, the better

you

you will bear it. But take care the mind be not jaded*.

If divinity be your peculiar study, observe the following rules.

1. Be critically expert in the original scriptures of the bible, and read a chapter in Hebrew, and another in Greek, every day. Especially observe the different senses in which the same original word is used by the same author: this often, throws a great light on his meaning.

2. When you have found what you take to be your author's own sense, keep to that, and admit of no vague, uncertain, or conjectural constructions, whatever doctrine they may discountenance or favour.

3. Be sure to make the sacred scripture the source, standard, and rule, of all your theological sentiments. Take them from it, bring them to it, and try them by it.

4. Make yourself master of some short, well

* Socrates ille non hominum modo, verum etiam Apollinis oraculo, sapientissimus judicatus, et perennis Philosophiæ Fons, dicere solet : "Radicem quidem eruditionis peramarum esse, sed fructum habere jucundissimum; initioque magnos adferre labores, sed honestissimum sudantibus præmium reponere." Ergô, O tu, quisquis es, cui ignea vis in pectore exarsit, qui flamma in præcordiis micat, procul absint mollia, lenia, facilia, blanda, quæ animi impetum extinguere solent. Dura petamus, &c. Vid. Ringelbergius

de Ratione Studii, p. 13.

chosen

chosen system of divinity, for the sake of method and memory; but take care (nullius in verbum jurare magistri) that you be not swayed by the credit of any human names in matters of divine faith. Let reason, evidence, and argument, be the only authorities to which you submit. Remember it is truth you seek; and seek her (as you would do any thing else) in the place where she is most likely to be found.

5. Divest yourself as much as possible of all prepossession in favour of, or prejudice against, any particular party-names and notions. Let the mind be equally balanced, or it will never rightly determine the weight of arguments. Prejudice in one scale will outweigh much solid truth in the other: and under such a prepossession, the mind only observes which balance preponderates, not what it is that turns it*.

6. Cultivate a proper sense of the imbecility of the human mind, and its proneness to error, both in yourself and others. This will guard you against a dogmatical confidence in defence of your own opinions, and arm you against the influence of it in others. On the contrary, endeavour after a meek humble, teachable temper; which, from the high

Here I may be permitted to recommend the careful perusal of Dr. Watts's chapter on Prejudices, which forms a useful and valuable part of his treatise on Logic. T.

est

est authority, we are sure, is the best disposition of mind to seek and receive divine truth*.

7. Be not fond of controversy +. Theological altercations have in all ages been the bane of real religion, and

* Ps. xxv. 9.

66

The worthy author's censure of religious controversy, though many melancholy facts may have given too just ground for it, is lax and indiscriminate. Controversy, it should be observed, may be conducted without the spirit of acrimony, or the jealousy and bitterness of altercation. If it mean a fair statement of arguments on both sides of a question, in order to investigate truth, so far from being censurable, it is commendable, and even necessary, to come to correct and just conclusions. "It is to such controversies," observed a judicious writer, (Dr. Disney), as engaged the pens of Clarke, Hoadly, and Sykes, that we owe much of what is most valuable and dear to us." "If no disputes," says bishop Pearce, "had ever been raised in the christian church, there is great reason to think that less of truth would have been preserved in it, than there is to be found at present." Mr. Mason's unguarded censure goes to suppress enquiry, and to prevent discussion. Free, candid discussion detects errors, whets the mental powers, opens the mind, restores the purity of religion, and leads to a rational convic tion of its truth and doctrines. A minister owes it tò the gospel which he is to preach, if he would " keep the commandment pure and undefiled: he owes to truth, if he would be its faithful advocate, to study carefully the evidences of the dogmas which have passed, in the christian world, as the doctrines of christianity. However it may not be right to give to his sermons the air of polemical divinity, it is neces

sary

and the fatal source of unknown mischief to true ehristianity. It sours the temper, confounds the judgment, excites malevolence, foments feuds, and banishes love from the heart: and, in fine, is the devil's most successful engine to depreciate and destroy the principles of vital piety. Let the controversies you read be the most important, viz. those against the Deists and Papists. And read only the best authors upon them. Among whom you will find none to exceed the late bishop of London and Dr. Leland in the former, and Dr. Tillotson and Chillingworth in the latter.

sary, if he would preach with accuracy and precision, if he would enlighten the minds of his hearers, and appeal to their judgment and convictions, to form himself, and to lay before others clear and decided opinions on controverted points.Caution ought not to degenerate into dissimulation, nor moderation into an indifference to truth, nor candour into lukewarmness. Whatever evils may have arisen from religious controversy, there is no occasion to consider it as "the devil's engine," or to ascribe them to the craft of a supposed invisible spirit, when the real causes of them have been visible and open; namely, the force of habit and prejudice, human passions, and the connection of worldly emoluments and power, with the profession of particular doctrines. Besides, it is an odd supposition, that the devil, according to the ideas entertained of him, as " the father of lies," should employ as an engine of his malevolence what, eventually, assists to ascertain and fix the truth. See "A Review of the Life, &c. of the Rev. John Biddle," section 13. T.

8. Avoid