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xxviii them into all the subtilties of false logic. The second mischief is, that rendering by this manner of reasoning, the good suspected, they have no other arms to enable them to attack the worst and most pernicious performances; by which means the public lose the very rules by which they might distinguish them. If they treat as Spinosists and as Deists those that are not so, what will they say to those who are?

"Though we ought readily to think that the men who write against us, upon subjects in which all mankind are concerned, are determined to this conduct by the force of Christian charity; nevertheless as the nature of this virtue will fearcely permit it to be concealed, as it shews itself in us in spite of ourselves, and shines and sparkles on all sides; if it happened that in two pieces both wrote against the same person, one upon the back of another, there could be found no trace of this charity, that it did not appear in any phrase, in any turn, any word, any expression; he who had wrote such works would have just reason Rh