It
seems to have been handed down by tradition, and had certainly become
proverbial; but whether then composed or only applied, thus much must be
admitted, that in learning, sense, energy, and comprehensiveness, it is
fully equal to all the modern dissertations on the equality of mankind:
and it has one advantage over them,--that it is in rhyme.[23]
There is no doubt but that this great teacher of the rights of man
decorated his discourse on this valuable text with lemmas, theorems,
scholia, corollaries, and all the apparatus of science, which was
furnished in as great plenty and perfection out of the dogmatic and
polemic magazines, the old horse-armory of the Schoolmen, among whom the
Rev. Dr. Ball was bred, as they can be supplied from the new arsenal at
Hackney. It was, no doubt, disposed with all the adjutancy of
definition and division, in which (I speak it with submission) the old
marshals were as able as the modern martinets. Neither can we deny that
the philosophic auditory, when they had once obtained this knowledge,
could never return to their former ignorance, or after so instructive a
lecture be in the same state of mind as if they had never heard it.
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