B.

None I assure you, my good friend. I was not even studying the subject. I am reading Mr. Newton's Brief Review of Ecclesiastical History, which affords me as much pleasure and instruction as the study of analogy can do. But to say the truth, there is much analogy in it, for so there must needs be in every true history; for all truth is related, or consanguineous, if you will allow the expression. The smile which you observed on my face proceeded from the perusal of some analogical remarks of Mr. Newton. Speaking, in his 2d chapter, of Saint Paul, as an exemplar of a minister of Christ, he says: Nay, so strong was his love to the churches, that it balanced his desire to be with Christ. In the passage referred to, we see the happy centripetal and centrifugal forces which carried him on through the circle of duty: he constantly tended and gravitated to his centre of rest; but successive opportunities of usefulness and service drew him off, and made him willing to wait yet longer." Again, in the same chapter, in a note on Romans xii., he says: "This practice the Apostle recommends by the metaphor of heaping coals of

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fire on an enemy's head. As metals, that endure a moderate warmth without alteration, are melted down and quite dissolved by an intense heat; so the hard heart, even of an enemy, may be sometimes softened, by a series, an indefatigable heaping up, of favours and obligations. This is a noble piece of chemistry, but almost as much out of repute and practice as the search after the philosopher's stone." What now do you think of Mr. Newton's analogy?

A.

Mr. Newton was certainly an excellent man, a real Christian, full of sincerity and simplicity; but if we may depend on those who are said to have known him best, he was more admirable for faith and love, than for knowledge of men, or books of natural science; and therefore his opinions respecting natural philosophy and chemistry, in the view of analogy, the analogy of faith, as he calls it, must be received with as much caution perhaps, my good friend, as your own. Such similitudes, if appositely used, are sometimes pleasant, and tend to enliven a subject which too many are apt to consider as dry and dull. But I confess they do not appear to me to prove any thing, except this; that nature and art being

almost infinite in their modes and operations, as well as mind or spirit; therefore some things in the immense variety of the former must necessarily resemble, more or less, some things in the equal variety of the latter. But because I find one thing in a thousand, or ten thousand, of these two opposite scales of matter and spirit, to have a certain resemblance, which is not a direct resemblance in kind, for that appears impossible; but only a supposed and conditional resemblance, founded on the proviso, that we admit, in the first place, the forms and motions, &c. of matter to be capable of being descriptive of, or as you term it typical of, the affections of the heart and mind; am I therefore to take it for granted, upon such a slight and fanciful hypothesis, that all visible things are perfect images or at least shadows of spiritual things? This is getting on too fast, my friend your imagination is riding a race, or rather darting on the wing, and I am toiling after you on foot. I wish you would seriously and regularly demonstrate the reality of the analogy in the above fanciful passages in Mr. Newton's Review, from first to last: I should then be a better judge of the subject than I am at present; for I confess that your

abrupt and incoherent exclamations, and your jumping assertions from one thing to another, between which I see no connection in the nature of things, prove nothing to my judgment. However uncongenial it may be to my mind, I will, to get rid of the subject, and, as I have no particular business just now, give you a patient hearing: so collect all your forces and begin.

B.

I cannot decline your challenge; yet I almost despair of success in such an undertaking, because I see that you have no taste for the subject. I have therefore to fight against hosts of prejudices, armed from head to foot, like Job's Leviathan, with scales of pride, which the sword of truth cannot penetrate, unless it be applied by a greater power than mine. In fact, to make a convert of an infidel to analogy seems to me little less difficult than to make a convert of an infidel to Christianity; because the analogy of nature, as Doctor Young justly observes in his Night Thoughts, is Christianity, in a veil, or parable. Whoever rejects Chrisanalogy also, at least the vital or positive part of it; for it has a double. tongue, and there is an analogy which is death,

tianity must reject

as the philosophers, and the world groaning now under the consequences of their experiments, have found to their cost*.

Stop, if you please.

A.

You have now uttered a string of mysterious propositions, to prove any one of which will perhaps consume the whole day. Do not wander so, but begin with Mr. Newton's metaphors.

B.

You well point out the difficulty of my undertaking. You shew clearly, that unless you yourself are willing to believe and be convinced, it is an hopeless task. I have, it must be confessed, no direct proof that the scales of Leviathan are, either in shape or colour, or contexture, like to pride and prejudice. But you, my friend, believe the Scriptures in a plain practical way, which is certainly the best in general. You will not therefore deny that in the Book of Job, the scales of Leviathan are said to be his pride: they are also said to adhere so closely together, that no air can come between them. Hence you must allow that these scales are emblematic of pride, for it is so written. Will you allow this?

* These Dialogues were written in 1810.