APOLOGY.

I

F good and ill nature equally operated upon mankind, I might have faved myfelf the trouble of this apology; for it is manifeft by the reception the following dif courfe hath met with, that thofe, who approve it, are a great majority among the men of tafte: yet there have been two or three treatises written expreffly againft it, befides many others that have flirted at it occafionally, without one fyllable having been ever published in its defence, or even quotation to its advantage, that I can remember, except by the polite author of a late difcourfe between a Deift and a Socinian.

Therefore, fince the book seems calculated to live at leaft as long as our language and our taste admit no great alterations, I am content to convey fome apology along with it.

The greatest part of that book was finished about thirteen years fince, 1696, which is eight years before it was published. The author was then young, his invention at the height, and his reading fresh in his head. By the affiftance of fome thinking, and much converfation, he had endeavoured to trip himfelf of as many real prejudices as he could; I fay

VOL. I.

Br

APOLOG Y.

I

F good and ill nature equally operated upon mankind, I might have faved myfelf the trouble of this apology; for it is manifeft by the reception the following difcourse hath met with, that thofe, who approve it, are a great majority among the men of tafte: : yet there have been two or three treatises written expreffly againft it, befides many others that have flirted at it occafionally, without one fyllable having been ever published in its defence, or even quotation to its advantage, that I can remember, except by the polite author of a late difcourfe between a Deift and a Socinian.

Therefore, fince the book feems calculated to live at least as long as our language and our taste admit no great alterations, I am content to convey fome apology along with it.

The greatest part of that book was finished about thirteen years fince, 1696, which is eight years before it was published. The author was then young, his invention at the height, and his reading fresh in his head. By the affiftance of fome thinking, and much converfation, he had endeavoured to trip himfelf of as many real prejudices as he could; VOL. I. B2

I bay

I fay real ones, becaufe, under the notion of prejudices, he knew to what dangerous heights fome men have proceeded. Thus prepared, he thought the numerous and grofs corrup tions in religion and learning might furnish matter for a fatyr, that would be useful and diverting. He refolved to proceed in a manner that thould be altogether new, the world having been already too long naufeated with endless repetitions upon every fubject. The abuses in religion he proposed to fet forth in the allegory of the coats, and the three brothers, which was to make up the body of the difcourfe: thofe in learning he chofe to introduce by way of digreffions. He was then a young gentleman much in the world, and wrote to the taste of thofe who were like" himself; therefore, in order to allure them, he gave a liberty to his pen, which might not fuit with maturer years, or graver characters, and which he could have eafily corrected with a very few blots, had he been master of his papers for a year or two before their publi

cation.

Not that he would have governed his judgment by the ill-placed cavils of the four, the envious, the ftupid, and the tasteless, which he mentions with difdain. He acknowledges there are feveral youthful fallies, which from the grave and the wife may deserve a rebuke. But he defires to be anfwerable no farther than he is guilty, and that his faults may not be multiplied by the ignorant, the unnatural, and uncharitable applications of those, who