CHAPTER XVI. 209 This defect also is to be relieved by " free conversation withpersons of different sentiments ;" this will teach us to bear with patience a defence of opinions contrary to our own. If we are scholars, we should also read the objections against our own tenets, and view the principles of other parties, as they are re-. presented in their own authors, and not merely in the citations of those who would confute them. We should take an honest and unbiassed survey of theforce of reasoning on all sides, and bring all to the test of unprejudiced reason and divine revelation.' Note, This is not to be done in a rash and self- sufficient manner ; but with ahumble dependenceon divine wisdom and grace while we walk among snares and dangers. By such a free converse with persons of different sects (es- pecially those who differ only in particular forms of Christianity, but agree in the great and necessary doctrines of it) we shall find that there are persons of good sense and virtue, persons of piety and worth, persons of much candour and goodness, who belong to different parties, and have imbibed sentiments opposite to each other. This will soften the roughness of an unpolished soul, and enlarge the avenues of our charity towards others, and incline us to receive them into all the degrees of unity and affec- tion which the word of God requires. (3.) I might borrow further illustrations both of this free- dom and this aversion to receive new truths from modern astro- nomy and natural philosophy. How much is the vulgar part of the world surprised at the talk of the diurnal and annual re- volutions of the earth ? They have ever been taught by their senses and their neighbours, to imagine the earth stands fixed is the centre of the universe, and that the sun with all the planets awl the fixed stars are whirled round this little globe once in twenty-four hours ; not considering that such a diurnal motion, by reason of the distance of some of those heavenly bodies, must be almost infinitely swifter and more inconceivable than any which the modern ástronomers attribute to them: Tell these . persons that the sun is fixed in the centre, that the earth, with all the planets, roll round the sun in their several periods, and that the moon rolls round the earth in a lesser circle, while toge- ther with the earth she is carried round the sun; they cannot ad- mit a syllable of this new and strange doctrine, and they pro- nounce it utterly contrary to all sense and reason. Acquaint them that there are four moons also perpetually rolling round the planet Jupiter, and carried alongwith him in his periodical circuit round the sun, which little moons were never known till the year 1610, when Galileo discovered them by his telescope ; info»m them that, Saturn has Jive moons of the same kind attending him ;, and that the body of that planet is encompassed with a broadflat circular ring, distant from the
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