412 PECULIAR CONTROVERSIAL METHODS xi 



summary as to warrant the use of tke extremest 

 weapons of controversy against those who presume to 

 differ from him. 



The six heretical propositions which have gone 

 before are enunciated with sufficient clearness to 

 enable me to prove, without any difficulty, that, 

 whosesoever they are, they are not mine. But 

 number seven, I confess, is too hard for me. I 

 cannot undertake to contradict that which I do 

 not understand. 



What is the " entire question " which " arises " 

 in a " narrowed form " upon " secular testimony " ? 

 After much guessing, I am fain to give up the 

 conundrum. The " question " may be the owner- 

 ship of the pigs ; or the ethnological character of 

 the Gadarenes ; or the propriety of meddling with 

 other people's property without legal warrant. 

 And each of these questions might be so 

 " narrowed " when it arose on " secular testimony " 

 that I should not know where I was. So I am 

 silent on this part of the proposition. 



But I do dimly discern, in the latter moiety of 

 this mysterious paragraph, a reproof of that use of 

 " the extremest weapons of controversy " which is 

 attributed to me. Upon which I have to observe 

 that I guide myself, in such matters, very much by 

 the maxim of a great statesman, " Do ut des." If 

 Mr. Gladstone objects to the employment of such 

 weapons in defence, he would do well to abstain 

 from them in attack. He should not frame 



