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A

FOURTH LETTER

FOR

TOLERATION.

FOURTH LETTER

FOR

TOLERATION*.

SIR,

A FRESH revival of the controversy formerly between you and me is what I suppose nobody did expect from you after twelve years' silence. But reputation, a sufficient cause for a new war, as you give the world to understand, hath put a resolution into your heart, and arms into your hands, to make an example of me, to the shame and confusion of all those who could be so injurious to you, as to think you could quit the opinion you had appeared for in print, and agree with me in the matter of Toleration. It is visible how tender even men of the most settled calmness are in point of reputation, and it is allowed the most excusable part of human frailty; and therefore nobody can wonder to see a

* In answer to A Second Letter to the Author of the Three Letters for Toleration. From the Author of the Argument of the Letter concerning Toleration briefly considered and answered; and of the Defence of it. With a Postscript, taking some Notice of Two Passages in The Rights of the Protestant Dissenters.

report thought injurious laboured against with might and main, and the assistance and cause of religion itself taken in and made use of to put a stop to it. But yet for all this there are sober men who are of opinion, that it better becomes a Christian temper, that dis putes, especially of religion, should be waged purely for the sake of truth, and not for our own: self should have nothing to do in them. But since as we see it will crowd itself in, and be often the principal agent, your ingenuity in owning what has brought you upon the stage again, and set you on work, after the ease and quiet you resolutely maintained yourself in so many years, ought to be commended, in giving us a view of the discreet choice you have made of a method suited to your purpose, which you publish to the world in these words, p. 2: "Being desirous to put a stop to a report so injurious, as well as groundless, as I look upon this to be, I think it will be no improper way of doing it, if I thus signify to you and the reader, that I find nothing more convincing in this your long letter than I did in your two former; giving withal a brief specimen of the answerableness of it: which I choose to do upon a few pages at the beginning, where you have placed your greatest strength, or at least so much of it as you think sufficient to put an end to this controversy.'

Here we have your declaration of war, of the grounds that moved you to it, and of your compendious way to assured victory; which I must own is very new and very remarkable. You choose a few pages out of the beginning of my Third Letter; in these, you say, "I have placed my greatest strength." So that, what I have there said being baffled, it gives you a just triumph over my whole long Letter; and all the rest of it being but pitiful, weak, impertinent stuff, is by the overthrow of this forlorn hope fully confuted.

This is called answering by specimen. A new way, which the world owes to your invention; an evidence that whilst you said nothing you did not spare thinking. And indeed it was a noble thought, a stratagem which

I believe scarce any other but yourself would have found out in a meditation of twice twelve years, how to answer arguments without saying a word to them, or so much as reciting them; and, by examining six or seven pages in the beginning of a book, reduce to nothing above three hundred pages of it that follow. This is indeed a decisive stroke that lays all flat before you. Who can stand against such a conqueror, who, by barely attacking of one, kills a hundred? This would certainly be an admirable way, did it not degrade the conqueror, whose business is to do; and turn him into a mere talking gazetteer, whose boasts are of no consequence. For after slaughter of foes, and routing of armies by such a dead-doing hand, nobody thinks it strange to find them all alive again safe and sound upon their feet, and in a posture of defending themselves. The event, in all sorts of controversies, hath often better instructed those who have, without bringing it to trial, presumed on the weakness of their adversaries. However this which you have set up, of confuting without arguing, cannot be denied to be a ready way, and well thought on to set you up high, and your reputation secure in the thoughts of your believing readers, if that be, as it seems it is, your business; but, as I take it, tends not at all to the informing their understandings, and making them see the truth and grounds it stands on. That, perhaps, is too much for the profane vulgar to know; it is enough for them that you know it for them, and have assured them that you can, when you please to condescend so far, confound all that any one offers against your opinion. An implicit faith of your being in the right, and ascribing victory to you, even in points whereof you have said nothing, is that which some sort of men think most useful; and so their followers have but tongues for their champion to give him the praise and authority he aims at, it is no matter whether they have any eyes for themselves to see on which side the truth lies. Thus, methinks, you and I both find our account in this controversy under your management; you in setting your reputation safe from the blemish it would have been to it that you were brought

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