other. You must go through with my preface, which I prefixed to my translation of that great man. Having carried and dismantled the outwork, you must next proceed to demolish the Dissertation on the Divine Attributes; which having destroyed, you are then to assail the citadel; I mean, those five stubborn chapters, which make up the body of the treatise itself. All the allies, or the arguments drawn from scripture and reason, must likewise be put to the sword. This should you attempt to do in a manner worthy of a scholar and a divine, I shall have no objection (if life and health continue) to measuring swords, or breaking a pike with you. Controversy, properly conducted, is a friend to truth, and no enemy to benevolence. When the flint and the steel are in conflict, some sparks may issue which may both warm and enlighten. But I have no notion of encountering a windmill in lieu of a giant. If, therefore, you come against me (as now) with straws instead of artillery; and with chaff in the room of ammunition; I shall disdain to give you battle: I shall only laugh at you from the ramparts. Much less, if you descend to your customary recourse of false quotations, despicable invective, and unsupported dogmatisms, shall I hold myself obliged to again enter the list with you. An opponent who thinks to add weight to his arguments by scurrility and abuse, resembles the insane person, who rolled himself in mud in order to make himself fine. I would no more enter into a formal controversy with such a scribbler, than I would contend for the wall with a chimney-sweeper. When some of your friends gave out, two or three months before your late doughty publication, that Mr. John (as they call you) was shut * ting himself up, in order to answer the Translator of Zanchius; I really imagined that something tolerably respectable was going to make its appearance. But Quid dignum tanto tulit hic Promissor, Hiatu? After the teeming mountain had been shut up a competent time, long enough to have been brought to bed of an Hercules, forth creeps a puny, toothless mouse, a mouse of heterogeneous kind; having little more than its head and tailt from you; and the main of its body made up of some mangled, castrated citations from Zanchius. Currente Rota, cur Urceus exit? If I may judge of the future by the past, and unless you amend greatly in a short time, your four-penny Supplement, when it appears, will be no less inconsiderable than the penny sheet already extant. And, as the mouse is not cheap at a penny, I am very apprehensive, the rat, when it ventures out, will be too dear at a groat. Hitherto, your treatment of Zanchius resembles that of some clumsy, bungling anatomist, who, in the dissection of an animal, dwells much on the larger and more obvious particulars; but quite omits the nerves, the lymphatics, the muscles, and the most interesting parts of the complicate machine. Thus, in your piddling extract * Dreadful his thunder, while unprinted, roar ; DR. YOUNG. Title-page: and his concluding Paragraph, p. 12. from the pamphlet you have thought proper to curtail, you only give a few of the larger outlines, without at all entering into the spirit of the subject, or so much as producing (so far from attempting to refute) any of the turning points, on which the argument depends. Wrench the finest eye that ever shone in a lady's head, from its socket, and it will appear frightful and deformed; whereas, in its natural connexion, the symmetry and brilliancy, the expressiveness and the beauty, are conspicuous. So it often fares with authors. A detached sentence, artfully misplaced, or unseasonably introduced; maliciously applied, or unfairly cited; may appear to carry an idea the very reverse of its real meaning. But replace the dislocated passage, and its propriety and importance are restored. I would wish every unprejudiced person, into whose hands. your Abridgment of my translation has fallen, to suspend his judgment concerning it, till he sees the translation itself. On comparing the two together, he will at once perceive how candid and honest you are; and what quantity of confidence may be reposed on your integrity as a citer. When I advert to the unjust and indecent manner in which you attacked the late Mr. Hervey; above all, when I consider how daringly free you have made with the scriptures themselves, both in your commentaries, and in your alterations of the text itself; I cease to wonder at the audacious licentiousness of your pen respecting me. I should rather wonder, if you treated any opponent with equity, or canvassed any subject impartially. Rise but once to this, and I shall both wonder and rejoice. You give me to understand, that I am but " a young translator." Granted. Better, however, 282 to be a young translator, than an old plagiary. Which of our ancient divines have you not evaporated and spoiled? and made them speak a language, when dead, which they would have started from, with horror, when alive?* "Yet Brutus is an honourable man." How miserably have you pillaged even my publication? Books, when sent into the world, are no doubt, in some sense, public property. Zanchius, if you chose to buy him, was yours to read; and, if you thought yourself equal to the undertaking, was yours to answer: but he was not yours to mangle. Remember how narrowly you escaped a prosecution some years ago, for pirating the poems of Dr. Young. I would wish you to keep your hands from literary picking and stealing. However, if you cannot refrain from this kind of stealth, you can abstain from murdering what you steal. You ought not, with Ahab, to kill, as well as take possession; nor giant like, to strew the area of your den with the bones of such authors as you have seized and slain. On most occasions you are too prone to set up your own infallible judgment as the very lapis lydius of right and wrong. Hence the firebrands, arrows, and death, which you hurl at those who presume to vary from the oracles you dictate. Hence, particularly, your illiberal and malevolent spleen against the Protestant Dissenters ;† though yourself are, in many respects, a Dissen * See almost every part of what Mr. Wesley miscalls, The Christian Library. "How little is the case mended at the meeting? either the teachers are new-light men, denying the Lord that bought them; or they are Predestinarians, and so preach pre 283 ter of the worst kind. I would not, however, by this declaration, be understood, as if I meant to dishonour that respectable body, by classing you with them; for you stand alone, and are a Dissenter of a cast peculiar to yourself. And yet, like Henry I. you are for making the length of your own arm the standard-measure for every body else. No wonder, therefore, that you eminently inherit the fate of Ishmael: that your "hand is against every man, and every man's hand against you." Strange! that one who pleads so strenuously for universal love in the Deity, should adopt so little of the love for which he pleads! That a person of principles so large, should have an heart so narrow! Bigots of eve destination and final perseverance, more or less. Nor is it expedient for any Methodist Preacher, to imitate the Dissenters in their manner of praying; either in his tone, or in his language, or in the length of his prayer. Neither should we sing like them, in a slow, drawling manner. We sing swift, both because it saves time, and because it tends to awaken and enliven the soul." Mr. Wesley's Preserv. against unsettled nations, p. 244. How much more civilly, not to say cordially, this gentleman shakes hands with the Papists, let his own words declare: "Can nothing be done, even allowing us on both sides to retain our opinions, for the softening our hearts towards each other -My dear friend consider, I am not persuading you to leave or change your religion: but to follow after that fear and love of God, without which all religion is vain. I say not a word to you about your opinions, or outward manner of worship. We ought, without this endless jangling about opinions, to provoke one another to love and to good works. Let the points wherein we differ stand aside. Here are enough wherein we agree.-O Brethren, let us not still fall out by the way!" Mr. Wesley's letter to a Roman Catholic, p. 4, 8, 10. Far be it from me to charge Mr. Wesley with a fondness for all the grosser parts of Popery. Yet I fear the partition between that church and him, is somewhat thinner than might he wished. Or, rather, like the loving Pyramus and Thisbe, they endeavour to remedy the want of a perfect coalition, by kissing each other through an hole in the wall. |