knowledged to be paradoxical, fhould these principles appear the leaft defective in point of evidence; should they only prove obviously liable to be mifconceived or mifapplied; it may be no useless attempt to shew that they are not necessary: and that the manner in which the truths of Chriftianity have been conveyed, can be defended against the cavils of infidelity, without any hardy oppofition to the general sense of Mankind. A A DISSERTATION ΟΝ ΤΗΕ PRINCIPLES. OF ELOQUENCE, &c. CHAP. I. HE great author of our being hath fo conftituted this human frame, that our fenfitive faculties are fcarcely ever employed without fome degree of emotion, fome fpecies of pleasure or pain, fome affection or paffion. In our infant days, before words are learned, or the organs formed to utter articulate founds, we observe ftrong natural figns of fuch emotion in the looks and voice. As we advance in life, and examine the B objects objects of sense with greater accuracy, when we are enabled to compare them, and to perceive their beauty, their grandeur, or other like ideas, delight and wonder are their neceffary attendants; and fuch forcible impreffions are instantly, and inftinctively communicated to the voice and language. So that the language of man in a folitary state, before it was directed to inform and perfuade his fellow-creatures, must have been in fome degree vehement and animated, the effufions of a mind not in the torpid ftate of indifference, but moved and agitated by all the objects which surrounded him, and oftentimes eager to exprefs it's affections. Accordingly the great English Poet, when he defcribes our first parent juft created, and furveying the magnificence of that theatre in which he was placed, makes him break out into the following eloquent addrefs, as the natural expreffion of his rap it ture.' ye Thou Sunfair light! gay ! And thou enlighten'd Earth, fo fresh and MILTON. The exercife and improvement of reafon, whatever effect may have in regulating and directing the paffions, neither feeks nor tends to fupprefs them. Every acceffion of knowledge is in itself pleafing and affecting. Even Mathematical truths truths, which have the least intercourse with human paffions, are not received with cold indifference: when confidered as purely fpeculative, without any attention to their use or application, we are delighted with them; nay sometimes even transported by what metaphysical Critics call the beauty of Theorem. And if truths meerly fpeculative have fuch an effect upon the mind, much less can those be received with lifelefs in- I difference, which have an obvious connection with our interest and happiness. Informations of this kind, whether from sense or reafon, are ever attended with joy, pleasure, fear, hope, desire, or averfion and these are paffions which cannot be fuppreffed; they agitate our whole frame, and break out involuntarily in our looks, our voice, and language. That intercourse with mankind, in which we are engaged, calls forth another tribe of paffions and affections, as anger, indignation, benevolence, fympathy, and all those numerous emotions which are excited by the appearance of aimable or odious qualities in our fellow-creatures, by the occupations, interests and contests of social life. We know from general and uniform experience, nay we feel that these naturally and unavoidably produce an elevation or vehemence of speech, or a tender and melancholy flow of words, or a disorder and abruptness of discourse, lively images and fimilitudes, glowing expreffions, or some other of those modes which Rheto- ' ricians call tropical and figurative. As Nature hath formed us to these agitations of mind, fo it is nature herself, who thus effert animi motus, INTERPRETE LINGUA. HOR. Metaphor, Similitude, and Allegory, tho' fome of them |