will you show us, that it is necessary, that any who have resisted the truth, tendered to them only by preaching, should be saved, any more than it is necessary that those who have resisted the truth, when moderate force has been joined to the same preaching, should be saved? They are inexcusable one as well as the other; and thereby have incurred the wrath of God, under which he may justly leave the one as well as the other; and therefore he cannot be said not to have been furnished with competent means of salvation, who, having rejected the truth preached to him, has never any penalties laid on him by the magistrate to make him consider the truths he before rejected.

All the stress of your hypothesis for the necessity of force, lies on this, That the majority of mankind are not prevailed on by preaching, and therefore the goodness and wisdom of God are obliged to furnish them some more effectual means, as you think. But who told you that the majority of mankind should ever be brought into the strait way and narrow gate? Or that force in your moderate degree was the necessary and competent, i. e. the just fit means to do it, neither over nor under, but that that only, and nothing but that, could do it? If, to vindicate his wisdom and goodness, God must furnish mankind with other means, as long as the majority, yet unwrought upon, shall give any forward demander occasion to ask, "What other means is there left?" he must also, after your moderate penalties have left the greater part of mankind unprevailed on, be bound to furnish mankind with higher degrees of force upon this man's demand: and those degrees of force proving ineffectual to the majority to make them truly and sincerely Christians; God must be bound to furnish the world again with a new supply of miracles upon the demand of another wise controller, who having set his heart upon miracles, as you have yours on force, will demand, what other means is there left but miracles? For it is like this last gentleman would take it very much amiss of you, if you should not allow this to be a good and unquestionable way of arguing; or if you should deny that, after the

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utmost force had been used, miracles might not do some service at least, indirectly and at a distance, towards the bringing men to embrace the truth. And if you cannot prove that miracles may not thus do some service, he will conclude just as you do, that the cause is his.

Let us try your method a little farther. Suppose that when neither the gentlest admonitions, nor the most earnest entreaties will prevail, something else is to be done, as the only means left. What is it must be done? What is this necessary competent means that you tell us of? "It is to lay briars and thorns in their way." This therefore being supposed necessary, you say, "there must somewhere be a right to use it." Let it be so. Suppose I tell you that right is in God, who certainly has a power to lay briars and thorns in the way of those who are got into a wrong one, whenever he has graciously pleased that other means besides instructions and admonitions should be used to reduce them. And we may as well expect that those thorns and briars laid in their way by God's providence, without telling them for what end, should work upon them as effectually, though indirectly and at a distance, as those laid in their way by the magistrate, without telling them for what end. God alone knows where it is necessary, and on whom it will be useful, which no man being capable of knowing, no man, though he has coercive power in his hand, can be supposed to be authorized to use it by the commission he has to do good, on whomsoever you shall judge it to be of great and even necessary use: no more than your judging it to be of great and even necessary use would authorize any one, who had got one of the incision-knives of the hospital in his hand, to cut those for the stone with it, whom he could not know needed cutting, or that cutting would do them any good, when the master of the hospital had given him no express order to use his incision-knife in that operation; nor was it known to any but the master, who needed, and on whom it would be useful; nor would he fail to use it himself wherever he found it necessary.

Be force of as great and necessary use as you please; let it be so the competent means for the promoting the honour of God in the world, and the good of souls, that the right to use it must necessarily be somewhere. This right cannot possibly be, where you would have it, in the civil sovereigns, and that for the very reason you give, viz. because it must be where the power of compelling resides. For since civil sovereigns cannot compel themselves, nor can the compelling power of one civil sovereign reach another civil sovereign; it will not in the hands of the civil sovereigns reach the most considerable part of mankind, and those who, both for their own and their subjects' good, have most need of it. Besides, if it go along with the power of compelling, it must be in the hands of all civil sovereigns alike which, by this, as well as several other reasons I have given, being unavoidable to be so, this right will be so far from useful, that whatever efficacy force has, it will be employed to the doing more harm than good; since the greatest part of civil sovereigns being of false religions, force will be employed for the promoting of those.

But let us grant what you can never prove, that though all civil sovereigns have compelling power, yet only those of the true religion have a right to use force in matters of religion: your own argument of mankind being unfurnished, which is impiety to say, with competent means for the promoting the honour of God and the good of souls, still presses you. For the compelling power of each civil sovereign not reaching beyond his own dominions, the right of using force in the hands only of the orthodox civil sovereigns leaves the rest, which is the far greater part of the world, destitute of this your necessary and competent means for promoting the honour of God in the world, and the good of souls.

Sir, I return you my thanks for having given me this occasion to take a review of your argument, which you told me I had mistaken; which I hope I now have not, and have answered to your satisfaction.

I confess I mistook when I said that cutting, being judged useful, could not authorize even a skilful surgeon to cut a man without any further commission; for it should have been thus: that though a man has the instruments in his hand, and force enough to cut with, and cutting be judged by you of great and even necessary use in the stone; yet this, without any further commission, will not authorize any one to use his strength and knife in cutting, who knows not who has the stone, nor has any light or measures to judge to whom cutting may be necessary or useful.

But let us see what you say in answer to my instance: 1. "That the stone does not always kill, though it be not cured; but men do often live to a great age with it, and die at last of other distempers. But aversion to the true religion is certainly and inevitably mortal to the soul, if not cured, and so of absolute necessity to be cured." Is it of absolute necessity to be cured in all? If so, will you not here again think it requisite that the wise and benign Disposer and Governor of all things should furnish competent means for what is of absolute necessity? For will it not be impiety to say, that God has so left mankind unfurnished of competent, i. e. sufficient means for what is absolutely necessary? For it is plain in your account men have not been furnished with sufficient means for what is of absolute necessity to be cured in all, if in any of them it be left uncured. For as you allow none to be sufficient evidence, but what certainly gains assent; so by the same rule you cannot call that sufficient means, which does not work the cure. It is in vain to say, the means were sufficient, had it not been for their own fault, when that fault of theirs is the very thing to be cured. You go on: "and yet if we should suppose the stone as certainly destructive of this temporal life, as that aversion is of men's eternal salvation: even so the necessity of curing it would be as much less than the necessity of curing that aversion, as this temporal life falls short in value of that which is eternal." This is built upon a supposition, that the necessity of the

means is increased by the value of the end, which being in this case the salvation of men's souls, that is of infinite concernment to them, you conclude salvation absolutely necessary: which makes you say that aversion, &c. being inevitably mortal to the soul, is of absolute necessity to be cured. Nothing is of absolute necessity but God: whatsoever else can be said to be of necessity, is so only relatively in respect to something else; and therefore nothing can indefinitely thus be said to be of absolute necessity, where the thing it relates to is not absolutely necessary. We may say, wisdom and power in God are absolutely necessary, because God himself is absolutely necessary: but we cannot crudely say, the curing in men their aversion to the true religion is absolutely necessary, because it is not absolutely necessary that men should be saved. But this is very proper and true to be said, that curing this aversion is absolutely necessary in all that shall be saved. But I fear that would not serve your turn, though it be certain that your absolute necessity in this case reaches no farther than this, that to be cured of this aversion is absolutely necessary to salvation, and salvation is absolutely necessary to happiness; but neither of them, nor the happiness itself of any man, can be said to be absolutely necessary.

This mistake makes you say, that supposing "the stone certainly destructive of this temporal life, yet the necessity of curing it would be as much less than the necessity of curing that aversion, as this temporal life falls short in value of that which is eternal." Which is quite otherwise: for if the stone will certainly kill a man without cutting, it is as absolutely necessary to cut a man for the stone for the saving of his life, as it is to cure the aversion for the saving of his soul. Nay, if you have but eggs to fry, fire is as absolutely necessary as either of the other, though the value of the end be in these cases infinitely different; for in one of them you lose only your dinner, in the other your life, and in the other your soul. But yet, in these cases, fire, cutting, and curing that aversion, are each of them