have grafted your dispute upon the very root of religion, and therefore if its consequences be hurtful, they must be infinitely more dangerous than differences in matters less fundamental. A radical putrefaction strikes at the life of the whole, whereas a distempered branch may be lopped off, and with it the entire disorder. Should one of these aids-du-camp, that receive orders from the general in time of battle, misconceive or wilfully alter the message he is charged with, it would infallibly pervert the whole scheme of the battle, and endanger the loss of the day. The hazard would not be so considerable, if a petty captain would fight his troop after a method different from the main design of the engagement.

However, though the point on which you differ may be a fundamental one, I am afraid your wrangling about it will have worse consequences than could proceed from either the one opinion or the other, were it universally received and established. Do not think, gentlemen, that religion is to stand or fall, according as this or that of your opinions shall obtain. You know it subsisted for many ages, and withstood the persecution of otherguise adversaries, than a few sneering libertines, without troubling itself much about analogy. It was no subtle distinctions, nor nice metaphy. sical schemes that supported this magnificent fabric in the midst of so many storms; no, it was faith, piety, and charity, pillars of a solider kind of stuff than ever was dug from the mines of the schools.

But you have only run fondly into the same warmth with all the other theological disputants that have gone before you, every one of whom has made the particular controversy, howsoever trivial it may have been, in which he was engaged, the one only question on which all religion bottomed, and represented the tenets of his adversary as utterly destructive of faith and revelation. It is to be wondered, that persons of such uncommon understandings, and that have set themselves to open new avenues to truth, should repeat so trite an error, and sink the main value of their performances, by laying an immoderate stress on the part controverted. How ridiculous would it be for a common soldier, or a petty officer, in the time of battle, to tell those that stood next him, that if he should be killed, it

would be in vain to dispute the victory any longer, since the whole success of the day centered entirely in him?

Either you intend, by the opposition you give each other, to serve the cause of religion, or to advance and secure your credit as authors. Now, as I cannot help supposing the former, from that excellent spirit, and that extraordinary measure of understanding that shines throughout the writings of you both, you must give me leave, gentlemen, to put you in mind, that you are taking a most preposterous method to answer the good end proposed. Calm your resentments a little, and look back upon the controversies of former ages, and see what blood they have spilt, what scars or wounds ill healed, they have left on our religion. Look round you, and see, by the general sneer, what excellent diversion you afford your libertine adversaries, who are saved the trouble of attacking you, by your mutual animosity, and rejoice to find each of you sinking under a stronger arm than their own.

You are each of you labouring to prove, that whatsoever his antagonist has said on the point in dispute, is idle, equivocating, and erroneous.

The common adversaries of you both, fear not, will be ready enough to believe you. You need not be at the trouble to demonstrate it to them. I'll engage they'll take it on your bare word. Nay, they'll do more than that; they will extend whatsoever you charge each other with, in the article of debate, to the rest of your performance. They will allow you all that imputation of nonsense and fallacy, which you are so ready to throw upon each other in a particular case, to be justly chargeable on the whole. This is more, I believe, than either of you ever thought, or intended to prove, yet be assured, your arguments prove nothing short of it among libertines, who, all the world knows, have a trick of drawing general conclusions from particular premises.

You both will say, that you are concerned to see the truth abetted by fallacious arguments; and that a wrong defence does more harm to a good cause, than an open and direct opposition.

This may be true, and you are very much in the right to be therefore concerned. But perhaps the defence is not so

wrong as you imagine. Would you know whether it is or not? Let me humbly suggest a method to you, which alone I would prefer to your own judgments. When the Jewish Sanhedrim deliberated whether they should persecute the disciples of our Saviour with the secular arm, and were almost unanimously determined to a resolution not unlike yours, that is, of suppressing such opinions, as they did not approve of, by human means; Gamaliel stopped their violent proceedings, with advice to leave them to themselves, and an assurance, that a little time would shew whether they were of God or man. If either of you be a Theudas or a Judas, your writings will fall beneath the power of that God, whose religion they deserve; and this will infallibly be their fate, though no man should ever trouble himself to refute them.

If you be fellow-workers with the apostles, as I confidently believe you are, you will stand upon the same foundation with them, stand in spite of hell and the world, in spite of the enemies of truth and virtue. But this moderation and reliance on Providence is still more directly recommended to you by the practice of our Saviour. When one of his disciples told him, that he finding one, who was not a follower of him, casting out devils in his name, had forbidden him, he reproved his mistaken zeal, telling him, 'that whatsoever was not against them, was on their part.' Do not hinder each other from casting out the devils of heresy and infidelity. The work is good, and since you both do it in the name of God, never reproach one another with not following the footsteps of your Master.

But you may have found, before this, that the generality of your readers, especially those that read you to find your faults, do not judge altogether so charitably of your motives for falling foul upon one another. They suppose your warmth proceeds not from love of truth, but of applause; and that instead of labouring to fortify religion, you are only endeavouring to secure the foundations of those books, on which you build your credit with posterity. That they judge amiss, those who know you can witness; yet since they can give your dispute the appearance of proceeding from such unworthy motives, would it not be more prudent to drop, than maintain it any longer,

forasmuch as, while it subsists, it can serve no other end, than that of frustrating the good effects of whatsoever else you may write, or tarnishing the lustre of books otherwise full of beauty, and furnishing our adversaries with matter for unworthy reflections on the bravest champions of our cause?

Though I believe there are few spirits exalted farther above the love of praise, by a refined sense of things, and a thirst of higher glory, than that which a well wrote book can reflect upon its author; yet I neither think it wrong, that you should place the reputation of having well defended the best cause in the world, in a distant part of your view, nor do I think it possible it should be otherwise. But then, gentlemen, you cannot reasonably hope for any reputation by a performance of that kind, unless what you derive from your engaging in it out of a love to your religion, as your primary and principal motive, and from your appearing to proceed consistently with that motive in the prosecution of your design. How far contention and reproach may be inconsistent with both, judge for yourselves. It is absolutely requisite in a good general, and indeed in every officer and soldier, that he engage in a war with a hearty zeal for his country, and the cause he espouses, and that he seek his glory not so much in doing brave actions, as in doing them to promote the interest he is embarked in. When ambition, or a thirst of glory, has been the ruling principle of action, we find it has pursued the good of its country only so far as that, and its love of glory coincided, and when they have run across each other, has turned its arms against its country, and sought reputation in destroying, as it did before in defending it. We have had our Coriolanus', our Syllas, and our Cæsars in the church, as well as elsewhere, who have done nobly for the cause of religion, while it was able to discharge the pay of honour, and on the other hand, have made most unsightly havoc of what they so strenuously defended before, when religious differences have arisen, and party ambition has directed their mouths another way.

It is not my opinion, gentlemen, that you are of this kind of men. I rather think you take up arms to defend and maintain, with an honest zeal, what each of you appre

hends to be the true constitution of our religion. But for the sake of that religion, consider, that you are in the mean time wasting your own country, maintaining troops at a vast expense of talents only lent you in trust, to shed their own, not their enemies blood; and that by these means the constitution is so far from being bettered, that the subjects are diminished, the authority of the laws sorely shaken, and the whole in danger of being disconcerted and ruined; not by the issue of your controversy, which could have but slight effects, were it decided either way, but by the ill blood you may raise, the breach you open for our vigilant adversaries, and the unhappy diversion this bone of contention is likely to give to those weapons, which your great Master has put into your hands, not to gore each others sides, but to do execution among his and your enemies. I cannot sufficiently lament the loss religion sustains by those, who spend the talents God has given them to traffic on for the general profit of their fellowChristians, in civil wars among themselves. What infinite sums have we lost in every age since that of the apostles, by this fatal misapplication of what must be, one day, most severely accounted for! What a heavy draught is made on us at present, by the alienation of your talents, who have so much of our stock in your hands. It is a grievous loss when an officer of great experience, or a soldier of more than ordinary strength and courage, stand still in time of battle, and will not assist their own side; but it is still worse, if the one should strike down the weapons of his fellows, and hinder them from assaulting the enemy, and the other busy himself in misleading the men, and perverting the order of the battle.

What punishment, gentlemen, do you think that soldier would deserve, who, because those that happen to be stationed near him in an engagement would not imitate him in his manner of annoying the enemy, when perhaps it is a little singular too, and not altogether authorized by the discipline, should therefore expose them to the enemy, by shewing where they were unguarded, and how they might be easiest assaulted and slain? Would you pardon him if he should offer in vindication of himself, that he could not