cipalities and powers; and the same may be predicated of glorified saints, not merely upon the ground of analogy, but upon the scripture testimony that assigns to the possessor of ten talents rule over ten cities, and of five talents over five cities. From the grave of Abney and Hartopp, Watts was called to the sick-bed of the Rev. Samuel Rosewell, the pastor and intimate friend of his deceased patron. The father of this excellent man was the Rev. Thos. Rosewell, celebrated for his trial for high treason before the infamous Jefferies, and unjust condemnation in the reign of Charles II. The son was one of the pastors at Silver-Street, and was confined to his chamber by his last illness at the time of Sir Thomas Abney's death. When informed ofit he exclaimed, "Well, I shall soon go after." An interesting account of his conversation when visited by Watts, we have in one of the sermons which the latter preached at Bury-Street:-"Come, my friends," says he, "come into the chamber of a dying Christian; come, approach his pillow and hear his holy language: 'I am going up to heaven, and I long to be gone, to be where my Saviour is.-Why are his chariot wheels so long in coming?—I hope I am a sincere Christian, but the meanest and the most unworthy.-I know I am a great sinner, but did not Christ come to save the chief of sinners?—I have trusted in him, and I have strong consolation.-I love God, I love Christ. I desire to love him more, to be more like him, and to serve him in heaven without sin.-Dear brother, I shall see you at the right hand of Christ.-There I shall see our friends that are gone a little before,' (alluding to Sir T. Abney.) -'I go to my God and to your God, to my Saviour and to your Saviour. These," observes Watts, "are some of the dying words of the Rev. Mr. S. Rosewell, when with some other friends I went to visit him two days before his death, and which I transcribed as soon as I came home with their assistance." The health of Mr. Watts improved during the year 1722; * Sermons. he preached at times to his own people, and engaged in several occasional services; but he was not able regularly to occupy the pulpit at Bury-Street. He required frequent intervals of retirement and rest; and again, therefore, he resorted to publication, to compensate for the interruptions of his public ministry. The "glorious and controverted doctrine," as he terms it, of the trinity, at first engaged his thoughts; but his friends wisely advised him to undertake the easier and more useful task of transcribing some of his discourses for the press. The favourable reception which his first volume had met with, having reached a second edition, encouraged the undertaking, and another accordingly appeared in March, 1723. Literary exertion must have been a painful and laborious effort, as he states that his health only allowed him a few hours for study in a week; but such a mind as his could not remain inactive. "My slow returns of health, and want of capacity to fulfil my weekly ministrations in the church where God has placed me, is another constraining motive to attempt their edification in this manner. I give thanks to my God, who has blest this last year with some growing measures of strength for their service. I know they join their prayers with me for my perfect recovery; and I long and wait daily for the pleasure of constant labour amongst them. My duty demands this, and their love deserves it at my hands. And since I must not, I cannot, be quite idle in my retiring days, I thought of employing the press again for the service of their souls, to make some compensation for the inconstancy of my public ministry." The volume contained sixteen discourses, the first five devoted to Christian doctrine, and the rest to Christian morals. The same excellences and defects which characterise the former sermons, may be pointed out here: they are evangelical in sentiment, plain in style, and practical in their design; but marked with that diffuseness and prolixity, though to a less extent, that was noticed in their predecessors. The mode of sermonising common at the commencement of the last century, would be a severe trial to the patience of a modern audience; the divines of that day in preparing for the pulpit, seem to have acted upon the assumption, that their hearers desired to have the entire subject in hand spread out before them, with all its relations, inferences, and improvements prominently displayed; and, hence, any one of the sermons of Flavel, Henry, Owen, and Watts, might with very few additions be readily converted into a theological treatise. The Countess of Hertford mentions a pleasing instance of the utility of the volume upon Christian morals: a man who had been for twenty years "a bad husband, and a notorious drunkard," was by reading them reformed, and converted to a course of life the very opposite of his previous conduct. The well-known treatise on Logic appeared in the year 1724; a treatise which was soon sanctioned by the imprimatur of the learned world; and which, while it raised the fame of the writer, contributed more than any other work of its day, to rescue the science from that disrepute, into which the quibbling of the schools had brought it. The object which Watts contemplated was indeed a magnificent one-to expound the laws of thought-to facilitate the detection of fallacy-to define the mental process which must take place in all correct reasoning -to furnish a test to try the validity of an argument, to analyse the elements of which it is composed, and ascertain the basis upon which it is built--an object which the professed champions of dialectics, have too often abandoned for the display of frivolous subtilties and sophistical disingenuousness. Perhaps the plan which he sketched out, is too vast and comprehensive to be prosecuted with complete success-perhaps it was an error to suppose, that a system could be constructed to effect all the purposes proposed, definite in itself and yet universally applicable-perhaps in aiming at too much he is in danger of leading us only to empty generalities—yet the attempt was in the highest degree useful, to counteract the prejudices which the perverters of logical science had excited against it, and to introduce sounder views upon the subject. It has been the fate of dialectics, since the days of Zeno the Eleactic, who furnished the erotetic mode of disputation épurnois, Euclid of Megara, and Archytas, to whom the invention of the categories is attributed, to experience either gross perversion or almost total neglect; its utility has either been unwarrantably magnified or unduly contemned; the ancients who followed Aristotle were guilty of the former error, the moderns have been of the latter. Intellectual vanity led many of the early patrons of logic to elevate their favourite study into something profoundly mysterious; to involve it in obscurity and mist, in order to give undue importance to their own attainments; and thus to sacrifice the value of the science at the shrine of vulgar admiration. In the hands of the schoolmen it degenerated into a mere art of wrangling, a kind of gladiatorial exhibition with subtle fallacies and refined distinctions; while many of the studious recluses of the middle ages applied it to physical discoveries, and attempted to investigate the wide field of nature by the aid of the syllogism. This absurd misapplication deprived the "Queen of Arts" of the popular favour; the censures of Bacon and Locke almost banished her from the schools; while the mention of the Scholastic, Ramist, SemiRamist, Cartesian, Wolfian, and Kantian dialectic, the nice distinctions of the Arabians and Latins, Scotists, Thomists, Realists, and Nominalists, operated to inspire the prayer of St. Ambrose, A Dialectica Aristotelis libera nos, Domine. Yet logic rightly understood, and confined within the limits of its legitimate domain-the investigation of the canons of thought, and the application of these laws to intellectual acts is a most important branch of study, and highly serviceable to the cause of truth. An individual may indeed attain considerable argumentative skill, who has never studied a system; but to deny its utility on this ground, would be just as absurd as to deny the utility of a grammar, from the circumstance that many write and speak correctly who have never learnt its rules. - The "Logic" of Watts was originally written for the assist ance of his pupil, young Hartopp, to whom it is dedicated; and was published at the importunity of Mr. John Eames, the preface being dated "London, August 24, 1724." In the dissenting academies it was soon adopted as a text-book, as well as used in the national colleges; and many flattering testimonies, as to its merit, were received by the author from some of the most distinguished men of the day. Dr. Secker, when bishop of Oxford, wrote to him, stating that it was by no means the only piece he had written read in the university with high esteem; and Lord Barrington remarks, "I intend, as some have done Erasmus or a piece of Cicero, to read it over once a year." Dr. Johnson observes, "Of his philosophical pieces, his 'Logic' has been received into the universities; and, therefore, wants no private recommendation. If he owes part of it to Le Clerc, it must be considered, that no man who undertakes merely to methodise or illustrate a system, pretends to be its author." The accuracy of some of his definitions has been questioned, but the substantial utility of the work is not deteriorated by them; the elementary principles of the science are propounded and its remote deductions; and the manual adapts itself to students of all classes, from the uninstructed tyro to the advanced logician. The tutors of our academies, have ever properly regarded the cultivation of accurate principles of reasoning, as a necessary branch of ministerial education. Truth will, indeed, always prevail where the advantages are equal, but error has not unfrequently obtained a partial triumph owing to the unskilfulness of those who have contended with it. A correct display of the doctrines of the faith, may be made without the aid of dialectics; but the gordian knot which Hume constructed in his Essay on Miracles, could only have been unravelled by a logician. One of the most painful passages in the life of Watts now occurred an unhappy dispute with the celebrated Rev. Thos. Bradbury. This gave rise to a long epistolary war, in the year 1725, in which considerable warmth was displayed by both |