Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 5.djvu/111

ecclesiastical and other authors, reduced under proper heads, usually begun, and perhaps finished, while the collectors were young in the church, as beins; intended for materials, or nurseries to stock future sermons. You will observe the wise editors of ancient authors, when they meet a sentence worthy of being distinguished, take special care to have the first word printed in capital letters, that you may not overlook it: such, for example, as the inconstancy of fortune, the goodness of peace, the excellency of wisdom, the certainty of death; that prosperity makes men insolent, and adversity humble; and the like eternal truths, which every ploughman knows well enough, though he never heard of Aristotle or Plato. If theological commonplace books be no better filled, I think they had better be laid aside; and I could wish, that men of tolerable intellectuals would rather trust their own natural reason, improved by a general conversation with books, to enlarge on a point, which they are supposed already to understand. If a rational man reads an excellent author with just application, he shall find himself extremely improved, and perhaps insensibly led to imitate that author's perfections, although in a little time he should not remember one word in the book, nor even the subject it handled: for, books give the same turn to our thoughts and way of reasoning, that good and ill company does to our behaviour and conversation; without either loading our memories, or making us even sensible of the change. And particularly I have observed in preaching, that no men succeed better, than those who trust entirely to the stock or fund of their own reason, advanced indeed, but not overlaid by com-