This book by the
greatest hymn writer of all time, Isaac Watts, who penned such wonderful hymns such as "Alas and did my Savior bleed" and many, many others. This book on Logic and Reason was the standard textbook on logic at Harvard and Yale, that is till God was replaced by "liberalism" in our so called "modern" age. Anyways this book has been a blessing to me and I hope it can also be a blessing to you.
Your Servant, Samuel.:prof:
An excerpt from the introduction of Dr. Watts book. Surely, God gave this man much wisdom and understanding according to God's Word. This stuff is really good to me.
You know, Sir, the great design of this noble science is to rescue our reasoning powers from . their unhappy slavery and darkness ; and thus with all due submission and deference it offers a humble assistance to divine revelation. Its-chief business is to relieve the natural weaknesses of the mind by some better efforts of nature; it is to diffuse a light over the understanding in our inquiries after truth, and not to furnish the tongue with debate and controversy. True Logic is not that noisy thing that deals all in dispute and wrangling, to which former ages had debased and confined it ; yet its disciples must acknowledge also, that'they are taught to vindicate and defend the truth, as well as to search it out. True Logic doth not require a long detail of hard words to amuse mankind, and to puff up the mind with empty sounds, and a pride of false learning ; yet some distinctions and terms of art are necessary to range every idea in its proper class, and to keep our thoughts from confusion. The world is now grown so wise as not to suffer this valuable art to be engrossed by the Schools. In so polite and knowing an age, every Man of Reason will covet sorne acquaintance with Logic, since it renders its daily service to wisdom and virtue, and to the affairs of common life as well as" to the sciences.
LOGIC is the art of using Reason * well in our inquiries after truth, and the communication of it to others.
. Reason * is the glory of human nature, and one of the chief eminences whereby we are raised above our fellow-creatures, the brutes, in this lower world.
Reason, as to -the power and principle of it, is the common gift of God to all men, though all are not favoured with it by nature in an equal degree; but the acquired improvements of it in different men, make a much greater distinction between them than nature had made. I -could even venture to say, that the improvement of reason hath raised the learned and the prudent in the European world, almost as much above the Hottentots, and other savages of Africa, as those savages are by nature superior to the birds, the beasts, and the fishes.
Now the design of Logic is to teach Us the right use of our reason, or intellectual powers, and the improvement of them in ourselves and others. This is not only necessary in order to attain any competent .knowledge in the sciences, or the affairs of learning,
B
- The word Reason in this place is hot confined to the mere faculty of reasoning, or inferring one thing from another,, but includes all the intellectual power of man, but to govern both the greater and the meaner actions of life. It is the cultivation of our reason by which we are better enabled to distinguish good from evil, as well as truth from falsehood; and both these are matters of the highest importance, whether we regard this life* or the life to come.
The pursuit and acquisition of truth is of infinite concernment to mankind. Hereby we become acquainted with the name of things both in Heaven and earth, and their various relations to each other. It is by this means we discover our duty to God and our fellow-creatures ; by this we arrive at the knowledge of natural religion, and learn to confirm our faith in divine revelation, as well as to, understand what is revealed. Our wisdom, prudence, and piety, our present conduct and our future hope, are all influenced by the use of our rational powers in the search after truth.