it is evident that more, much more, harm may be expected from it than good; your own argument returns upon you. For if it be reasonable to use it, because it may be serviceable to promote true religion, and the salvation of souls: it is much more reasonable to let it alone, if it may be more serviceable to the promoting falsehood and the perdition of souls. And therefore you will do well hereafter not to build so much on the usefulness of force, applied your way, your indirect and at a distance usefulness, which amounts but to the shadow and possibility of usefulness, but with an overbalancing weight of mischief and harm annexed to it. For upon a just estimate, this indirect, and at a distance, usefulness, can directly go for nothing; or rather less than nothing.

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But suppose force, applied your way, were as useful for the promoting true religion, as I suppose I have showed it to be the contrary; it does not from hence follow that it is lawful and may be used. It may be very useful in a parish that has no teacher, or as bad as none, that a lay-man who wanted not abilities for it, for such we may suppose to be, should sometimes preach to them the doctrine of the gospel, and stir them up to the duties of a good life. And yet this (which cannot be denied, may be at least "indirectly, and, at a "distance, serviceable towards the promoting true religion, and the salvation of souls,") you will not, I imagine, allow, for this usefulness to be lawful: and that because he has not commission and authority to do it. The same might be said of the administration of the sacraments, and any other function of the priestly office. This is just our case. Granting force, as you say, indirectly and at a distance, useful to the salvation of men's souls; yet it does not therefore follow that it is lawful for the magistrate to use it: because as the author says, the magistrate has no commission or auFor however you have put it thus, as you have framed the author's argument, "force is utterly of no use for the promoting of true religion, "and the salvation of souls; and therefore no-body

thority to do so.

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can have any right to use any force or compulsion for "the bringing men to the true religion;" yet the author does not, in those pages you quote, make the latter of these propositions an inference barely from the former; but makes use of it as a truth proved by several arguments he had before brought to that purpose. For though it be a good argument; it is not useful, therefore not fit to be used: yet this will not be good logic; it is useful, therefore any one has a right to use it. For if the usefulness makes it lawful, it makes it lawful in any hands that can so apply it; and so private men may use it.

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"Who can deny, say you, but that force, indirectly " and at a distance, may do some service towards the "bringing men to embrace that truth, which otherwise they would never acquaint themselves with?" If this be good arguing in you, for the usefulness of force towards the saving of men's souls; give me leave to argue after the same fashion. 1. I will suppose, which you will not deny me, that as there are many who take up their religion upon wrong grounds, to the endangering of their souls; so there are many that abandon themselves to the heat of their lusts, to the endangering of their souls. 2. I will suppose, that as force applied your way is apt to make the inconsiderate consider, so force applied another way is apt to make the lascivious chaste. The argument then, in your form, will stand thus; "Who can deny but that force, indirectly and "at a distance, may, by castration, do some service to"wards bringing men to embrace that chastity, which "otherwise they would never acquit themselves with ?" Thus, you see, "castration may, indirectly and at a "distance, be serviceable towards the salvation of men's "souls." But will you say, from such an usefulness as this, because it may, indirectly and at a distance, conduce to the saving of any of his subjects souls, that therefore the magistrate has a right to do it, and may by force make his subjects eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven? It is not for the magistrate or any-body else, upon an imagination of its usefulness, to make use of any other means for the salvation of men's souls, than

what the author and finisher of our faith hath directed You may be mistaken in what you think useful. Dives thought, and so perhaps should you and I too, if not better informed by the scriptures, that it would be useful to rouze and awaken men if one should come to them from the dead. But he was mistaken. And we

are told, that if men will not hearken to Moses and the prophets, the means appointed; neither will the strangeness nor terrour of one coming from the dead, persuade them. If what we are apt to think useful were thence to be concluded so, we should, I fear, be obliged to believe the miracles pretended to by the church of Rome. For miracles, we know, were once useful for the promoting true religion, and the salvation of souls; which is more than you say for your political punishments: but yet we must conclude that God thinks them not useful now; unless we will say, that which without impiety cannot be said, that the wise and benign disposer and governor of all things does not now use all useful means for promoting his own honour in the world, and the good of souls. I think this consequence will hold as well as what you draw in near the same words.

Let us not therefore be more wise than our Maker, in that stupendous and supernatural work of our salvation. The scripture, that reveals it to us, contains all that we can know, or do, in order to it; and where that is silent, it is in us presumption to direct. When you can show any commission in scripture, for the use of force to compel men to hear, any more than to embrace the doctrine of others that differ from them, we shall have reason to submit to it, and the magistrate have some ground to set up this new way of persecution. But till then, it will be fit for us to obey that precept of the gospel, which bids us "take heed what we hear," Mark iv. 24. So that hearing is not always so useful as you If it had, we should never have had so direct a caution against it. It is not any imaginary use. fulness, you can suppose, which can make that a punishable crime, which the magistrate was never authorized to meddle with. "Go and teach all nations," was a commission of our Saviour's: but there was not

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added to it, punish those that will nor hear and consider what you say. No, but "if they will not receive you, shake off the dust of your feet; " leave them, and apply yourselves to some others. And St. Paul knew no other means to make men hear, but the preaching of the gospel; as will appear to any one who will read Romans x. 14, &c. "Faith cometh by hearing, "and hearing by the word of God."

You go on, and in favour of your beloved force you tell us that it is not only useful but needful. And here after having at large, in the four following pages, set out the negligence or aversion, or other hinderances that keep men from examining, with that application and freedom of judgment they should, the grounds upon which they take up and persist in their religion; you come to conclude force necessary. Your words are; "If men are generally averse to a due consideration of things, where they are mest concerned to use it; if they usually take up their religion without examining it as they ought, and then grow so opinionative " and so stiff in their prejudice, that neither the gen"tlest admonitions, nor the most earnest entreaties, "shall ever prevail with them afterwards to do it: what "means is there left, besides the grace of God, to re"duce those of them that are gone into a wrong way, "but to lay thorns and briars in it? That since they

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are deaf to all persuasions, the uneasiness they meet "with may at least put them to a stand, and incline "them to lend an ear to those who tell them they have "mistaken their way, and offer to show them the right." What means is there left, say you, but force? What to do? "To reduce men, who are out of it, into the right way." So you tell us here. And to that, I say, there is other means besides force; that which was appointed and made use of from the beginning, the preaching of the gospel.

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"But, say you, to make them hear, to make them consider, to make them examine, there is no other means but punishment; and therefore it is neces

I answer, 1. What if God, for reasons best known to

himself, would not have men compelled to hear; but thought the good tidings of salvation, and the proposals of life and death, means and inducements enough to make them hear, and consider, now as well as heretofore? Then your means, your punishments, are not necessary. What if God would have men left to their freedom in this point, if they will hear, or if they will forbear, will you constrain them? thus we are sure he did with his own people: and this when they were in captivity, Ezek. xi. 5, 7. And it is very like were illtreated for being of a different religion from the national, and so were punished as dissenters. Yet then God expected not that those punishments should force them to hearken more than at other times: as appears by Ezek. iii. 11. And this also is the method of the gospel. "We are ambassadors for Christ; as if God "did beseech you in Christ's stead," says St. Paul, 2 Cor. v. 20. If God thought it necessary to have men punished to make them give ear, he could have called magistrates to be spreaders and ministers of the gospel, as well as poor fishermen, or Paul a persecutor; who yet wanted not power to punish where punishment was necessary, as is evident in Ananias and Sapphira, and the incestuous Corinthian.

2. What if God, foreseeing this force would be in the hands of men, as passionate, humorsome, as liable to prejudice and errour as the rest of their brethren, did not think it a proper means to bring men into the right way?

3. What if there be other means? Then yours ceases to be necessary, upon the account that there is no means left. For you yourself allow, "that the grace of God " is another means." And I suppose you will not deny it to be both a proper and sufficient means; and, which is more, the only means; such means as can work by itself, and without which all the force in the world can do nothing. God alone can open the ear that it may hear, and open the heart that it may understand: and this he does in his own good time, and to whom he is graciously pleased; but not according to the will and fancy of man, when he thinks fit, by punishments, to