CHAPTER X. ryg to take hold of some occasional word, thereby to lead the dis- course offfrom the point in hand ? So much afraid is human nature of parting with its errors, and being overcome by truth. Just thus a hunted hare calls up all the shifts that nature bath taught her, she treads back her mazes, crosses and confounds her former track, and uses all possible methods to divert the scent, when she is in danger of being seized and taken. Let puss practise what nature teaches; but would one imagine that any rational being should take such pains to avoid truth, and to escape the improvement of his understanding? IX. When you cometo a dispute, in order to find out truth, do not presume that you are certainly possessed of it before- hand. Enter the debate with a sincere design of yielding to reason, on which side soever it appears. Use no subtle arts to cloud and entangle the question ; hide not yourself in doubtful words and phrases; do not affect little shifts and subterfuges to avoid the force of an argument; take a generous pleasure to espy the first rising beams of truth, though it be on the side of your opponent : endeavour to remove the little obscurities that hang about it, and suffer and encourage it to break out into open andconvincing light; that while your opponent, perhaps, may gain the better of your reasonings, yet you yourself may triumph over error, and I am sure that is a much more valuable acquisi- tion and victory. X. Watch narrowly, in every dispute, that your opponent does not lead you unwarily to grant some principle or propo- sition, which will bring with it a fatal consequence, and lead you insensibly into his sentiment, though it be far astray from the truth : and by this wrong step you will be, as it were, plunged into dangerous errors before you are aware. Polonides in free conversation led Incauta to agree with him in this plain proposition, that the blessed God has too much justice in any case to punish* any being who is in itself innocent; till he not only allowed it with an unthinking alacrity, but asserted it in most universal and unguarded terms. A little after Polonides came in discourse to commend the virtues, the innocence, and the piety of our blessed Saviour ; and thence inferred, it was im- possible that God should ever punish so holy a person who was never guilty of any crime: then Incauto espied the snare, and found himself robbed and defrauded of the great doctrine of the atonement by the death of Christ, upon which he had placed his immortal hopes according to the gospel. This taught him to bethink himself what a dangerous concession he had made in so universal a manner, that God would never punish any being who was innocent, and he saw it needful to recall his a The word " punish" here signifies, " to bring some natural evil upon a personon account of moral evil done."
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