mons of Friends, but never one that deserved a comparison with the real respectability of Barclay. In many things that he says passingly, he speaks the undoubted truth of God; and in his Theses Theologica, the fourteenth proposition itself, "concerning the power of the civil magistrate, in matters purely religious, and pertaining to the conscience," is admirable, and worthy of the almost unqualified approbation of christians. He produced his Apology in his comparative youth, when in his 27th year, or, at most, his 28th, and about nine years after uniting with the Society, which occurred in 1667. That he was a man of unblemished morals and unsullied fame, there lives not one to question. I sincerely respect him; and considering his Roman Catholic training, his jesuitical education on the continent, in connection with his very youth, when (in his 18th or 19th year) the imposing pretensions of Quakerism first entranced his devout imagination, I rather pity than dislike him, as I have often and deeply compassionated thousands, whose noble minds, like lions taken in the meshes of a secret net, were entangled, and subdued, and prostrated, by an influence which they could neither define nor escape. Let it be remembered, then, that I do not intentionally assail the man, when I examine and decry his sentiments; that it really grieves me to appear often as if I were opposing him; and when I use freely what he hath himself given to the public and posterity, I only avail myself of a universal right, which any other man may exercise, upon his own responsibility to God, in animadversion upon what I have written. In his public

character as a religious teacher, and in this alone, do I denounce him and his peers. The great fault of Barclay, as a reasoner, is, in my opinion, the anti-Baconian style of his reasoning. Though that illustrious reformer of the dialectic art, died about half a century before the Apology was written; and though his immortal Novum Organum had been extant then so many years, it is most probable (slighted as it was by many of the visionary votaries of Aristotle's theory-making logic) that Barclay had never read it! I infer this from the whole style of his reasoning, which no one will call Baconian who knows how to define the inductive philosophy, and has ever read the Apology once through, with his thoughts awake. I infer it from his views and denunciations of logic, as an art by which men "may learn twenty tricks and distinctions how to shut out the truth," and which only impedes that "secret virtue and power" which "ought to be the logic and philosophy wherewith a true christian minister should be furnished, and for which they need not be beholden to Aristotle." And I infer it from the fact, that he never once mentions Bacon, or alludes to him, (as I can find,) in the whole compass of his nearly 600 octavo pages. The logic of Bacon is the logic of the New Testament. Its principles are opposed to those of the Stagyrite, as they are founded in universal experience, observation, and fact. They coincide with all we know; they lead to true results; they are universal and impartial; they delight in evidence alone; they aid the interests and demonstrate the claims of christianity; and they just

as certainly exalt the Bible and explode Quakerism. That knowledge is not innate; that inward light is folly; that any man is liable to err; that we must make inferences from facts, which theory must follow and not precede, in order to the possession of knowledge; that men come into this world without ideas, ignorant as brutes, and derive all they know by means of sensation and reflection; that we must guard our premises, and make them sure, before we arrive at conclusions; and that one fact is worth a thousand theories, and good against a million: these are the main principles of true reasoning, and the foundation of the Baconian philosophy-a philosophy which is not "falsely so called," and the influence of which can be deprecated only by the contracted bigots of some fondled theory, begotten in darkness and instinctively trembling at the light. If Barclay was disgusted at the philosophy of Aristotle, and denounced it from a general conviction of its inutility, I agree with him: from his inference, however, from that premise, that we ought to throw away all learned logic, I dissent; and for the following reasons:-1. It is impossible to have none. Men deceive themselves when they think that all philosophy is bad, and that it is possible to retain our senses and forego the use of all. All men think, right or wrong; and they think also according to certain laws. To think aloof from all the principles of intellectual philosophy is impossible. The only question is whether our philosophy of thought shall be favorable or adverse to truth; whether it shall be true or false?-2. Barclay himself uses much of

the wit of the schools, and is much indebted to it (as thence Friends are also) in his whole treatise. He acknowledges, indeed, that he has used natural logic, which he commends, and at the same time contra-distinguishes from that of the schools, which he totally denounces. But is he right in this? Can any man suppose that natural logic alone gave him all that dialectic subtlety which he certainly evinces, and sometimes with success? Was it natural or scholastic wit that cast so many formal syllogisms in mood and figure, and strewed them profusely over his pages in such anticipated order? Method is one of the loftiest and most important divisions of artificial logic; and, at the same time, that in which natural logic fails most frequently, while it is also a division of which Barclay avails himself with considerable address throughout his volume. Friends have often boasted of him on this very account. He is plainly wrong, then, in scorning all artificial logic; and had he been well acquainted with Bacon's regenerated and most excellent system, I cannot suppose either that he could have denounced it, or that he ever would have written his Apology. The whole system of inward light much more accords with the fictions of Aristotle than with the strict and sober principles of Bacon: with which last indeed it cannot consist at all! What rational evidence is there in the decision of inward light? What relation has that light to evidence? No more than declamation has to argument, or assertion to proof.-3. Jesus Christ evinces the power of correct reasoning in all his preaching. The connection be

tween premise and conclusion; the necessity of evidence to thought, to obligation, and moral action; the power of the dilemma; the admissions of an opponent; the misery of sophism; the force of implication and inference; the ad hominem style; the reductio ad absurdum; the sorites; and almost every other manner of argumentation, is frequently exemplified in his reasonings. The same is true of all the sacred writers; especially of Paul, who was, at once, probably, the greatest reasoner, and the most useful man, that ever appeared as the inspired ambassador of Christ. My last reason is—4. That nobody actually believes the statement, (though some may suppose they do,) that well cultivated scholastic logic is of no use in religion, and not a desirable and responsible gift of providence. False learning, and the abuse of true, are both bad; but surely this does not impair the excellency and usefulness of true learning! A man's spirituality, just here, may be wonderfully influenced -unknown perhaps to himself-by envy! He may have no learning; he may feel their superiority who are not in his predicament; he may be unable, or unwilling, or without opportunity to study; and therefore he may set himself to disparage what he does not possess, and would—from no good motive possibly-very gladly attain, could "the desire of the slothful," or the caprice of the vain, or the resources of the wealthy, procure it for him. Facts speak on this point. How much is the cause of the Reformation indebted to learning? Almost as much as learning has been also indebted to it! Look