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4JO
THE
ADVANTAGES
OF
HUMILITY
SECT.
Iv:
What
is
it
but
the over-weening conceit
of
our
being
wiser and
better
than
others
that
renders
us
constantly
so
tenacious of
all
our
opinions,
and
deaf
to
all
further enqui-
ries
and
reasonings?
What
is
it
makes
us
set up for
dicta-
tors
to
the
world
with so
much frontless assurance, and
fix
our
own
sentiments
as
a
test and standard
of
truth
?
All
the learned
sciences
and
the
affairs
of
common
life,
trade
and
politics, mechanic arts, poesy and morals, are the
daily
subjects of
these infallible declaimers,
both
at
the
table,
and
the
coffee- house,
and
in
private
visits,
and yet
more
eminently
at
the tavern
:
There
indeed the wine
brightens every
idea into
truth, it
raises the courage and
the
voice
together, and establishes
every man
triumphant
in his
own
opinion.
The
vain
creature
knows all things.
But
one
would
think
that
the
sacred
and
sublime to-
pics
of
religion should
be
treated
with
a
more doubtful
and
ingenuous modesty
;
especially where the
holy wri-
ters
themselves
are not
very
express and
positive
in
their
determinations. One
would
think there should
be some
abatements
to
our confidence, and
that
we
might some-
times
speak
with
a
holy fear
and
suspicion
of our
under-
standings
in
points of the
most
abstruse and
divine
argu-
ment,
where
wise
and
good
men
have often been divided.
Alas
for
our
pride and
folly
!
ror
our wretched igno-
rance
and our shameful-conceit
!
Let
Mr. Baxter,
who
was a man
of great
sagacity
and
a
wise
observer
of
hu-
man nature, set
it
before
us
in this
admirable
tetrastic,
wherein the
verses
are
superior
to many
of
their
neigh-
bours.
We crowd
about
a
little spark,
Learnedly
striving
in
the dark,
Never
more bold
than
when
most
blind,
And
we
run
fastest when
the truth's behind."
But
we
are generally too
wise
to
tread
one
step back
again,
though it
be
to lay hold
on
the
truth
which we
have
out-run
in
our
haste
to
assurance. We
have some-
times found it
in
ourselves
and
observed
it
in
others that
the
firmness
of
a
pretended
orthodoxy has not
been
al-
ways
derived from light and evidence.
Want
of
humility
in the
heart
is
too often
the
reason
why we
have
no
want
of
confidence
in
our
opinions, whether they
be
true or
false.
The boldest and
most
peremptory
assertions are