is the duty of all magistrates to use force to bring men to embrace the religion of the church of England? Which, since it plainly follows from your doctrine, and I think you cannot deny to be your opinion, and what in effect you contend for; you will do well to speak it out in plain words, and then there will need no more to be said in the question.

And now I desire it may be considered, what advantage this supposition of force, which is supposed put into the magistrate's hands by the law of nature to be used in religion, brings to the true religion, when it arms five hundred magistrates against the true religion, who must unavoidably in the state of things in the world act against it, for one that uses force for it. I say that this use of force in the magistrate's hand is barely supposed by you from the benefit it is like to produce; but it being demonstration, that the prejudice that will accrue to the true religion from such an use of force is five hundred times more than the advantage can be expected from it; the natural and unavoidable inference from your own ground of benefit is, that God never gave any such power to the magistrate; and there it will rest till you can by some better argument prove the magistrate to have such a power to which give me leave to add one word more.

You say the magistrate is obliged by the law of nature to use force to promote the true religion: must he stand still and do nothing till he certainly know which is the true religion? If so, the commission is lost, and he can never do his duty; for to certain knowledge of the true religion he can in this world never arrive. May he then act upon "firm persuasions and full assurance, grounded upon such clear and solid proofs as the true religion alone has, and no false one can have?" And then indeed you have distinguished yourself into a safe retreat. For who can doubt but your third sort or degree of persuasion, if that be your meaning, will determine the magistrate to the true religion, when it is grounded on those which are the proofs only of the true religion; which if it be all that you intend by your full assurance, (which is the title you give to this

your third sort or degree of persuasion) I must desire you to apply this in answer to my argument. I say, magistrates in general have nothing to determine them in their application of force but their own persuasion; and your answer is, the magistrates of the true religion have their own persuasion to determine them; but of all the other magistrates, which are above a hundred, I might say a thousand to one, you say nothing at all; and thus, by the help of a distinction, the question is resolved. I say the magistrates are not in a capacity to perform their duty, if they be obliged to use force to promote the true religion, since they have nothing to determine them but their own persuasion of the truth of any religion; which, in the variety of religions which the magistrates of the world have embraced, cannot direct them to the, true. Yes, say you, their persuasion, who have embraced the true religion, will direct them to the true religion. Which amounts at last to no more but this, That the magistrate that is in the right, is in the right: a very true proposition without doubt; but whether it removes the difficulty I proposed, any better than begging the question, you were best consider. There are five hundred magistrates of false religions for one that is of the true; I speak much within compass: it is a duty incumbent on them all, say you, to use force to bring men to the true religion. My question is, how can this be compassed by men who are unavoidably determined by the persuasion of the truth of their own religion? It is answered, they who are of the true religion will perform their duty. A great advantage surely to true religion, and worth the contending for, that it should be the magistrate's duty to use force for promoting the true religion, when in the state of things that is at present in the world, and always hitherto has been, one magistrate in five hundred will use force to promote the true religion, and the other four hundred ninety-nine to promote false ones:,

But perhaps you will tell me, That you do not allow that magistrates, who are of false religions, should be determined by their own persuasions, which are "built upon slight appearances of probability; but such as

are grounded upon clear and solid proofs," which the true religion alone has. In answer to this, I ask, Who must be judge whether his persuasion be grounded on clear and solid proofs; the magistrate himself, or you for him? If the magistrate himself, then we are but where we were; and all that you say here, with the distinction that you have made about several sorts of persuasion, serves only to lead us about to the same place for the magistrate, of what religion soever, must, notwithstanding all you have said, be determined by his own persuasion. If you say you must be judge of the clearness and solidity of the proofs upon which the magistrate grounds the belief of his own religion, it is time you should produce your patent, and show the commission whereby you act.

There are other qualifications you assign of the proof, on which you tell us "your third sort or degree of persuasion is grounded; and that is such as leaves no reasonable doubt in an attentive and unbiassed mind:" which unless you must be judge what is a reasonable doubt, and which is an attentive and unbiassed mind, will do you no manner of service. If the magistrate must be judge for himself in this case, you can have nothing to say to him; but if you must be judge, then any doubt about your religion will be unreasonable, and his not embracing and promoting your religion will be want of attention and an unbiassed mind. But let me tell you, give but the same liberty of judging for the magistrate of your religion to the men of another religion, which they have as much right to as you have to judge for the magistrate of any other religion in the points mentioned; all this will return upon you. Go into France, and try whether it be not so. So that your plea for the magistrate's using force for promoting the true religion, as you have stated it, gives as much power and authority to the king of France to use it against his dissenting subjects, as to any other prince in Christendom to use it against theirs, name which you please.

The fallacy in making it the magistrate's duty to promote by force the only true religion lies in this, that you allow yourself to suppose the magistrate, who is of

your religion, to be well-grounded, attentive, and unbiassed, and fully and firmly assured that his religion is true; but that other magistrates of other religions different from yours are not so: which, what is it but to erect yourself into a state of infallibility above all other men of different persuasions from yours, which yet they have as good a title to as yourself?

Having thus advanced yourself into the chair, and given yourself the power of deciding for all men which is, and which is not the true religion; it is not to be wondered that you so roundly pronounce all my discourse, p. 143, 144, "concerning the difference between faith and knowledge, to be impertinency;" and so magisterially to tell me, "that the thing I was there concerned to make out, if I would speak to the purpose, was no other but this, that there are as clear and as solid grounds for the belief of false religions as there are for belief of the true: or, that men may both as firmly and as rationally believe and embrace false religions as they can the true."

The impertinency in these two or three pages I shall leave to shift for itself in the judgment of any indifferent reader; and will only, at present, examine what you tell "I was concerned to make out, if I would speak to the purpose."

My business there was to prove, That the magistrate being taught that it was his duty to use force to promote the true religion, it would thence unavoidably follow, that not having knowledge of the truth of any religion, but only belief that it was true, to determine him in his application of force; he would take himself in duty bound to promote his own religion by force; and thereupon force would inevitably be used to pro.. mote false religions, upon those very grounds upon which you pretend to make it serviceable only to the true; and this, I suppose, I have in those pages evidently proved, though you think not fit to give any other answer to what I there say, but that it is impertinent, and I should have proved something else; which you would have done well, by a plain and clear deduction, to have shown from my words.

[The two following leaves of the copy are either lost or mislaid.]

After this new invention of yours, " of answering by specimen," so happily found out for the ease of yourself and other disputants of renown, that shall please to follow it; I cannot presume you should take notice of any thing I have to say: you have assumed the privilege, by showing your strength against one argument, to pronounce all the rest baffled; and therefore to what purpose is it to offer difficulties to you, who can blow them all off with a breath? But yet to apologize for myself to the world, for being of opinion that it is not always from want of consideration, attention, or being unbiassed, that men with firmness of persuasion embrace, and with full assurance adhere to, the wrong side in matters of religion; I shall take the liberty to offer the famous instance of the two Reynolds's, brothers, both men of learning and parts; whereof the one being of the church of England, and the other of the church of Rome, they both desiring each other's conversion to the religion which he himself was of, writ to one another about it, and that with such appearance of solid and clear grounds on both sides, that they were wrought upon by them: each changed his religion, and that with so firm a persuasion and full an assurance of the truth of that which he turned to, that no endeavours or arguments of either of them could ever after move the other, or bring him back from what he had persuaded him to. If now I should ask to which of these two full assurance pointed out the true religion; you no doubt, if you would answer at all, would say, To him that embraced the church of England, and a papist would say the other: but if an indifferent man were asked whether this full assurance was sufficient to point out the true religion to either of them, he must answer, No; for if it were, they must necessarily have been both of the same religion.

To sum up then what you answer to my saying, "It cannot be the magistrate's duty to use force to promote the true religion, because he is not in a capacity to perform that duty; for not having a certain knowledge,