be actuated exactly by the fame principles,-are unwilling to confess, that another has difcovered, what they, with the fame opportunities for examination, have not difcerned ;because, they confider fuch a confeffion as equivalent to an acknowledgement, that another is pursuing the fame objects with themselves, who grounds his title to the poffeffion of them, upon pretenfions, better founded than their own. As fuch a conviction, can not but impart pain to the mind in which it arifes; and as it is but too common to diflike them, who, though the unintentional, are fill the known caufes of inflicting it,-enmity readily

fprings

fprings up in the mind of the fufferer; and, exactly in proportion to the paucity of his refources from knowledge, reafon, and argument, for an attack upon the man, whom he looks upon as his adverfary, he becomes eager to employ the envenomed arrows of mifreprefentation, detraction, and abuse.

The gentleft treatment, which a writer can under thefe circumstances expect, unless he ftoops to the debafement of his own character, by appeafing envy with flattery, is, at leaft, that every trivial negligence, will be magnified into a monftrous error; and that even the poffibility

of an objection, will be aggrandized into a confutation of the opinion.

Thefe general caufes of oppofition, are befides, often greatly augmented, from circumftances of partial attachments to particular individuals and fects; and from as partial a diflike to other particular individuals and parties. Thefe motives will often excite oppofition, and even enmity against a writer, however candid he may himself happen to be in his judgments, or liberal in his fentiments: even when his fubject has no relation to the particular points, in which fects or parties differ from each other; but even, when it has

a

a tendency to promote the common cause, in which they agree.

But, fuch oppofition and attacks, however injurious they may at first fight appear to the interefts of truth, and hurtful to it's propagators, tend notwithstanding, perhaps, in the end, most effectually to advance the former, and to amend the latter.For, the more critically truth is examined, the more firmly it will be established; and the lefs reason a writer has to expect prefent fame, the more likely he will be, to extirpate the defire of that, and of every other gratification, by a fense of duty; the fole motive, by which

a man ought to be actuated in any pursuit, and the very principle, which best insures to a writer, the difcovery of truth.

Nothing, therefore, but the greatest inexperience, or the highest prefumption, could poffibly induce the author to believe, that none of the foregoing caufes will tend to obftruct the reception of his explanation of a paffage, upon which fo many confeffedly able writers have commented; and which, in his own juftification, he has been under the neceffity of proving, none of them have understood. He has, however, the confolation of reflecting, that by the MANNER in