_And first, if some morose Readers shall find fault with my having
made the Interlocutors upon occasion complement with one another, and
that I have almost all along written these Dialogues in a stile more
Fashionable then That of meer scholars is wont to be, I hope I shall
be excus'd by them that shall consider, that to keep a due_ decorum
_in the Discourses, it was fit that in a book written by a Gentleman,
and wherein only Gentlemen are introduc'd as speakers, the Language
should be more smooth, and the Expressions more civil than is usual in
the more Scholastick way of writing. And indeed, I am not sorry to
have this Opportunity of giving an example how to manage even Disputes
with Civility; whence perhaps some Readers will be assisted to discern
a Difference betwixt Bluntness of speech and Strength of reason, and
find that a man may be a Champion for Truth, without being an Enemy to
Civility; and may confute an Opinion without railing at Them that hold
it; To whom he that desires to convince and not to provoke them, must
make some amends by his Civility to their Persons, for his severity
to their mistakes; and must say as little else as he can, to displease
them, when he says that they are in an error._
_But perhaps other Readers will be less apt to find fault with the
Civility of my Disputants, than the Chymists will be, upon the reading
of some Passages of the following Dialogue, to accuse_ Carneades _of
Asperity. But if I have made my Sceptick sometimes speak sleightingly
of the Opinions he opposes, I hope it will not be found that I have
done any more, than became the Part he was to act of an Opponent:
Especially, if what I have made him say be compar'd with what the
Prince of the Romane Orators himself makes both great Persons and
Friends say of one anothers Opinions, in his excellent Dialogues,_ De
Natura Deorum: _And I shall scarce be suspected of Partiality, in the
case, by them that take Notice that there is full as much (if not far
more) liberty of sleighting their Adversaries Tenents to be met with
in the Discourses of those with whom_ Carneades _disputes. Nor needed
I make the Interlocutors speak otherwise then freely in a Dialogue,
wherein it was sufficiently intimated, that I meant not to declare my
own Opinion of the Arguments propos'd, much lesse of the whole
Controversy it self otherwise than as it may by an attentive Reader be
guess'd at by some Passages of_ Carneades: _(I say, some Passages,
because I make not all that he says, especially in the heat of
Disputation, mine,) partly in this Discourse, and partly in some other
Dialogues betwixt the same speakers (though they treat not immediately
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