His method he speaks unto, p. 13. " My method," saith he, " I do purposely conceal, to keep therein a more handsome decorum; for he that goes about to part a fighting fray cannot observe a method, but must turn himself this way and that, as occasion offers, be it a corporeal or mental duel. So did good St Paul, in his Epistle to the
12 ANIMADVERSIONS ON A TREATISE
Romans; which, of all his other epistles, as it hath most of solidity, so it hath least of method in the context : the reason is," etc. These are handsome words of a man that seems to have good thoughts of himself and his skill in parting frays. But yet I see not how they hang well together as to any congruity of their sense and meaning. Surely, he that useth no method, nor can use any, cannot conceal his method, — no, though he pui-pose so to do. No man s purpose to hide will enable him to hide that which is not. If he hath concealed his method, he hath used one : if he hath used none, he hath not con- cealed it; for "that which is wanting cannot be numbered." Nor hath he by this or any other means kept any " handsome decorum," not having once spoken the sense, or according to the principles of him whom he undertakes to personate ; which is such an observance of a decorum as a man shall not lightly meet with. Nor hath he disco- vered any mind so to part a fray as that the contenders might here- after live quietly one by another ; his business being avowedly to persuade as many as he can to a conjunction in one party for the destruction of all the rest. And whatever he saith of " not using a method," that method of his discourse, with the good words it is set off withal, is the whole of his interest in it. He pretends, indeed, to pass through " loca nullius ante Trita solo;" yet, setting aside his management of the advantages given him by the late miserable tumults in these nations, and the provision he has made for the enter- tainment of his reader is worts boiled a hundred times over; as he knows well enough. And for the method which he would have us believe not to be, and yet to be concealed, it is rather fiihdsia than /jyUodog, — rather a crafty, various distribution of enticing words and plausible pretences, to inveigle and delude men unlearned and un- stable, than any decent contexture of, or fair progress in, a rational discourse or regular disposition of nervous topics, to convince or per- suade the minds of men who have their eyes in their heads. I shall, therefore, little trouble myself farther about it, but only discover it as occasion shall require ; for the discovery of sophistry is its proper confutation.
However, the course he steers is the same that " good St Paul " used in his Epistle to the Romans; which hath, as he tells us, " most of solidity and least of method of all his epistles." I confess I knew not before that his church had determined which of St Paul's epistles had " most of solidity," which least; for I have such good thoughts of him, that I suppose he would not do it of his own head : nor do I know that he is appointed umpire to determine upon the writings that came all of them by inspiration from God, which is most solid. This, therefore, must needs be the sense of his church, which he may be acquainted with twenty ways that I know not of. And here his
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Protestant visor, which by-and-by he will utterly cast off, fell off from him, I presume, at unawares. That he be no more so entrapped, I wish he would take notice, against the next time he hath occasion to personate a Protestant, that although, for method purely adventiti- ous, and belonging to the external manner of writing, Protestants may affirm that one epistle is more methodical than another, accord- ing to those rules of method which ourselves, or other worms of the earth like to ourselves, have invented; yet, for their solidity, which concerns the matter of them, and efficacy for conviction, they affirm them all equal. Nor is he more happy in what he intimates of the immethodicalness of that epistle to the Romans ; for, as it is acknow- ledged by all good expositors, that the apostle usetli a most clear, distinct, and exact method in that epistle (whence most theological systems are composed by the rule of it), so our author himself assign- eth such a design unto him, and the use of such ways and means in the prosecution of it, as argue a diligent observance of a method. I confess he is deceived in the occasion and intention of the epistle, by following some few late Roman expositors, neglecting the analysis given of it by the ancients. But we may pass that by ; because I find his aim in mentioning a false scope and design was not to acquaint us with his mistake, but to take an advantage to fall upon our minis- ters, and I think a little too early for one so careful to keep a " hand- some decorum,'" for " culling out of this epistle texts against the Christian doctrine of good works done in Christ, by his special grace, out of obedience to his command, with a promise of everlasting re- ^vard and intrinsic acceptability thence accruing." Thus Ave see still, —