Please note that nothing in particular on the board prompted me to post this. I just came across it in my reading tonight, and I know that I myself can be a big offender in this area.
"However frequently it may be done—and it is done very frequently—nothing can be more unfair or illiberal, in controversy of any kind, and especially in religious controversy, than to make our own inferences from opinions which we dislike, and then to charge those inferences on the holders of the hated opinions—when the holders themselves utterly disclaim the inferences, and give sufficient evidence that they are not influenced by them. We may not only think that certain inferences follow from a given position, but admitting that they actually and legitimately follow, yet if those with whom we litigate deny them, and are manifestly not influenced by them, to charge them with the guilt or criminality of such inferences, is most uncandid and unjust."
—Ashbel Green, Lectures on the Shorter Catechism of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America: Addressed to Youth, vol. 1 (Philadelphia, PA: A. Finley and Towar & Hogan, 1829), 161.
—Ashbel Green, Lectures on the Shorter Catechism of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America: Addressed to Youth, vol. 1 (Philadelphia, PA: A. Finley and Towar & Hogan, 1829), 161.