CHAP. III. OF CONVINCING OTHER PERSONS, &c.

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and sincere delight in propagating truth, arising from a dutiful regard to the honour of our Maker, and an hearty love to mankind. Now if we would be successful in our attempts to convince men of their errors, and to promote the truth, let us divest ourselves, as far as possible, of that pride and affectation which I mentioned before, and seek to acquire that disinterested love to men, and zeal for the truth, which will naturally lead us into the best methods to promote it. And here the following directions may be useful.

I. IF you would convince a person of his mistake, choose a proper place, a happy hour, and the fittest concurrent circumstances for this purpose. Do not unseasonably set upon him when he is engaged in the midst of other affairs, but when his soul is at liberty, and at leisure to hear and attend. Accost him not upon that subject when his spirit is ruffled or discomposed with any occurrences of life, and especially when he has heated his passions in the defence of a contrary opinion, but rather seize a golden opportunity, when some occurrences of life may cast a favourable aspect upon the truth of which you would convince him, or which may throw some dark and unhappy colour or consequences upon that error from which you would fain deliver him. There are in life some molissima tempora fundi, some very agreeable moments of addressing a person, which, if rightly managed, may render your attempts more successful, and his conviction easy and pleasant.

II. MAKE it appear by your whole conduct to the person you would teach, that you mean him well, that your design is not to triumph over his opinion, nor to expose his ignorance, or his incapacity of defending what he asserts. Let him see that it is not your aim to advance your own character as a disputant, nor to set yourself up for an instructor to mankind; but that you love him, and seek his true interest and not only assure him of this in words, when you are entering on an argument with him, but let the whole of your conduct to him at all times demonstrate your real

friendship

friendship for him. Truth and argument come with particular force from the mouth of one whom we trust and love.

III. THE softest and gentlest address to the erroneous, is the best way to convince them of their mistakes. Sométimes it is necessary to represent to your opponent that he is not far off from the truth, and that you would fain draw him a little nearer to it; commend and establish whatever he says that is just and true, as our blessed Saviour treated the young scribe, when he answered well concerning the two great commandments; "Thou art not far," says our Lord," from the kingdom of heaven," Mark xii. 34. Imitate the mildness and conduct of the blessed Jesus.

Come as near to your opponent as you can in all your propositions, and yield to him as much as you dare, in a consistence with truth and justice.

It is a very great and fatal mistake in persons who attempt to convince or reconcile others to their party, when they make the difference appear as wide as possible: this is shocking to any person who is to be convinced, he will choose rather to keep and maintain his own opinions, if he cannot come into yours without renouncing and abandoning every thing that he believed before. Human nature must be flattered a little as well as reasoned with, that so the argument may be able to come at his understanding, which otherwise will be thrust off at a distance. If you charge a man with nonsense and absurdities, with heresy and selfcontradiction, you take a very wrong step towards convincing him.

Remember that error is not to be rooted out of the mind of man by reproaches and railings, by flashes of wit and biting jests, by loud exclamations or sharp ridicule: long declamations and triumph over our neighbour's mistake will not prove the way to convince him; these are signs either of a bad cause, or of want of arguments or capacity for the defence of a good one.

IV. SET, therefore, a constant watch over yourself, lest you grow warm in dispute before you are aware. The

passions

passions never clear the understanding, but raise darkness, clouds, and confusion in the soul: human nature is like water which has mud at the bottom of it, it may be clear while it is calm and undisturbed, and the ideas, like pebbles, appear bright at the bottom; but when once it is stirred and moved by passion, the mud rises uppermost, and spreads confusion and darkness over all the ideas; you cannot set things in so just and so clear a light before the eyes of your neighbour, while your own conceptions are clouded with heat and passion.

Besides, when your own spirits are a little disturbed, and your wrath is awakened, this naturally kindles the same fire in your correspondent, and prevents him from taking in your ideas, were they ever so clear; for his passions are engaged all on a sudden for the defence of his own mistakes, and they combat as fiercely as yours do, which perhaps may be awakened on the side of truth.

To provoke a person whom you would convince, not only rouses his anger, and sets it against your doctrine, but directs its resentment against your person, as well as against all your instructions and arguments. You must treat an opponent like a friend, if you would persuade him to learn any thing from you; and this is one great reason why there is so little success on either side between two dispu tants or controversial writers, because they are so ready to interest their passions in the subject of contest, and prevent the mutual light that might be given and received on either side: ambition, indignation, and a professed zeal, reign on both sides victory is the point designed, while truth is pretended, and truth oftentimes perishes in the fray, or retires from the field of battle: the combatants end just where they began, the understandings hold fast the same opinions; perhaps with this disadvantage, that they are a little more obstinate, and rooted in them without fresh reason, and they generally come off with the loss of temper and charity.

V. NEITHER attempt nor hope to convince a person of his mistake, by any penal methods or severe usage: there

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is no light brought into the mind by all the fire and sword, and bloody persecutions that were ever introduced into the world. One would think that the princes, the priests, and the people, the learned and the unlearned, the great and the mean, should have all, by this time, seen the folly and madness of seeking to propagate the truth by the laws of cruelty: we compel a beast to the yoke by blows, because the ox and the ass have no understanding; but intellectual powers are not to be fettered and compelled at this rate : men cannot believe what they will, nor change their religion and their sentiments as they please; they may be made hypocrites by the forms of severity, and constrained to profess what they do not believe; they may be forced to comply with external practices and ceremonies, contrary to their own consciences; but this can never please God, nor profit men.

VI. In order to convince another, you should always make choice of those arguments that are best suited to his understanding and capacity, his genius and temper, his state, station, and circumstances. If I were to persuade a ploughman of the truth of any form of church-government, it should not be attempted by the use of the Greek and Latin fathers; but from the word of God, the light of nature, and the common reason of things.

VII. ARGUMENTS should always be proposed in such a manner as may lead the mind onward to perceive the truth in a clear and agreeable light, as well as to constrain the assent by the power of reasoning. Clear ideas in many cases are as useful toward conviction, as a well-formed and unanswerable syllogism.

VIII. ALLOW the person you desire to instruct a reasonable time to enter into the force of your argument. When you have declared your own sentiments in the brightest manner of illustration, and enforced them with the most convincing arguments, you are not to suppose that your friends should immediately be convinced and receive the truth: habitude in a particular way of thinking, as well as

in most other things, obtains the force of nature, and you cannot expect to wean a man from his accustomed errors but by slow degrees, and by his own assistance; entreat him therefore not to judge on the sudden, nor determine against you at once, but that he would please to review your scheme, reflect upon your arguments with all the impartiality he is capable of, and take time to think these over again at large; at least that he would be disposed to hear you speak yet further on this subject, without pain or aversion.

Address him therefore in an obliging manner, and say, I am not so fond as to think I have placed the subject in such lights, as to throw you on a sudden into a new track of thinking, or to make you immediately lay aside your present opinions or designs; all that I hope is, that some hint or other which I have given is capable of being improved by you to your own conviction, or possibly it may lead you into such a train of reasoning, as in time to effect a change in your thoughts. Which hint leads me to add,

IX. LABOUR as much as possible to make the person you would teach his own instructor. Human nature may be allured, by a secret pleasure and pride in its own reasoning, to seem to find out by itself the very thing that you would teach; and there are some persons that have so much of this natural bias towards self rooted in them, that they can never be convinced of a mistake by the plainest and strongest arguments to the contrary, though the demonstration glare in their faces; but they may be tempted by such gentle insinuations to follow a track of thought, which you propose, till they have wound themselves out of their own error, and led themselves hereby into your opinion, if you do but let it appear that they are under their own guidance rather than yours. And perhaps there is nothing which shews more dexterity of address than this secret influence over the minds of others, which they do not discern even while they follow it.

X. If you gain the main point in question, be not very solicitous

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