Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 5.djvu/112

104 with books. Whoever only reads in order to transcribe wise and shining remarks, without entering into the genius and spirit of the author, as it is probable he will make no very judicious extract, so he will be apt to trust to that collection in all his compositions;, and be misled out of the regular way of thinking, in order to introduce those materials, which he has been at the pains to gather: and the product of all this, will be found a manifest incoherent piece of patchwork.

Some gentlemen, abounding in their university erudition, are apt to fill their sermons with philosophical terms, and notions of the metaphysical or abstracted kind; which generally have one advantage, to be equally understood by the wise, the vulgar, and the preacher himself. I have been better entertained, and more informed by a few pages in the Pilgrim's Progress, than by a long discourse upon the will and the intellect, and simple or complex ideas. Others again are fond of dilating on matter and motion, talk of the fortuitous concourse of atoms, of theories, and phenomena; directly against the advice of St. Paul, who yet appears to have been conversant enough in those kinds of studies.

I do not find, that you are any where directed in the canons or articles, to attemipt explaining the mysteries of the christian religion. And indeed, since Providence intended there should be mysteries, I do not see how it can be agreeable to piety, orthodoxy, or good sense, to go about such a work. For, to me, there seems to be a manifest dilemma in the case: if you explain them, they are mysteries no longer; if you fail, you have laboured to no pose.