be the daily and hourly effect of religious meditation. But, though the advantages of a continued contemplation of the Deity be thus conspicuous, it must not be dissembled that those polemical discussions, by which we guard and vindicate the distincter features of that faith on which the Christian delights to dwell, are rough with the thorns of human passion, and beset with the rocks and precipices of earthly pride. The chicane of argument; the boast of victory; the pertinacious rejoinder of unacknowledged discomfiture; the personal dislike which transfers to our adversary that detestation which should be confined to his doctrine; ambition lurking under the cloak of zeal, and vanity not labouring for the cause of truth, but declaiming in the hope of triumph; these are some few of the fiends which have continued to haunt the mansion of religious controversy from the days of Tertullian down to those of Calvin, from Marcion to Servetus, and from Jerome to Bellarmine. Nor need we wonder that portals oc cupied by such a garrison should be seldom and reluctantly trodden by the chaster feet of those who have been permitted to wander amid the bowers of Philosophy, to trace in the works of nature the evidence of almighty Goodness; or whose warfare has been carried on with the common enemies of the Christian name, not those who differ only in their interpretation of the same Divine authorities to which both we and they look up with equal reverence. What is necessary, however, must sometimes be undergone; and the safety of our brethren, no less than the authority and example of the Apostles, calls on us to observe the errors of our misguided friends with as keen attention as the open malice of our enemies; to repress the domestic seditions of the Christian Church, as well as to labour in the extension and progress of her empire. Nor must it be forgotten, that to unreasonable violence or uncharitable imputations, religious discussion is not more necessarily liable than any other question in which the happiness or interests of mankind D 2 kind are deeply involved. The systems of Philosophy, the inventions of Medicine, are in our own times debated with as much of acrimony as the abstrusest doctrines of Religion. The Senate and the Bar have had their bigots and fanatics as fiery as ever disgraced the Altar; and examples have not been wanting in the more illustrious advocates of our own and foreign Churches, which have demonstrated that zeal and wrath are not always inseparable, and that it is possible to defend the truths of Christianity or the sacred institutions of our ancestors, without forfeiting that charity which is to Religion what the Ark of the Covenant was of old to the Temple of God. And to this effect the following canons will, perhaps, be found to contribute.. First, That a perspicuous distinction be made, both in the statement of our subject and the degree of earnestness with which we pursue its investigation, between truths which are really Divine and eternal, and those institutions which are only of human authority, or, at most, of temporary expediency. Secondly, Secondly, That no opinion be imputed to our adversary which he himself disclaims, not even if such opinion should appear to be fairly deducible from premises which he acknowledges. For, though the argument ab absurdo be a very powerful and legitimate instrument in the war of words, and though it is not only useful but charitable to point out to our brethren and to the world the natural consequences of an erroneous doctrine yet if such consequences be disclaimed by our antagonist, we have a right indeed to argue from his inconsistency against his ability to guide the faith of other men; but we have no right to accuse him of insincerity, or to maintain that, because our inference is logical, he must necessarily see it in the same light with ourselves. We may caution his followers against the blindness of their guide, but it is more reasonable, as well as more Christian, to believe that his blindness is real than affected. Thirdly, It is fitting that we never advance an argument to convince or confute our antagonist, of the force of which we are not ourselves well satisfied. Even as worldly advocates such a practice is unwise, since a single unsound pillar may endanger the fall of the noblest temple; and since one detected sophism will do more injury to our cause than many good arguments can repair. But the practice is distinguished from absolute falsehood by shades so nearly imperceptible, that we may be very sure the cause of Divine truth can neither require nor tolerate so weak and disgraceful an auxiliary. This rule will naturally extend to the exclusion of all those vulgar arts of controversy, those arguments expressly and solely intended to captivate the multitude, those inapplicable citations of Scripture, and those appeals to human prejudice or passion which, unhappily, occupy too large a space in almost every controversy which has arisen since the time of the Apostles. But the offence is yet more flagrant when we descend to the retailing of uncertain and offensive rumours; when we refer to documents of which the falsehood has |