CHAPTER M. 44T possessions which arise from custom, it is of excellent use to travel, and see the customs of various countries, and to read the travels of other men, and the history of past ages, that every thing may not seem strange and uncouth which is not practised within the limits of our own parish, or in the narrow space of our own lifetime. 3. Consider yet again, how often we ourselves have chang- ed our own opinions concerning the decency, propriety, or con- gruity of several modes or practices in the world, especially if we have lived to the age of thirty or forty. Custom or fashion, even in all its changes, has been ready to have some degree of ascendency over our understandings, and what at one time seem- ed decent, appears obsolete and disagreeable afterward, when the fashion changes'. Let us learn therefore to abstract as much as possible from custom and fashion, when we would pass a judgment concerning the real value and intrinsic nature of things. III. The 'authority of men, is the spring of another rank of prejudices. Among these, the authority of our forefathers and ancient authors is most remarkable. We pay deference to the opinion of others, merely because they lived a thousand years before us ; and even the trifles and impertinencies that have a mark of anti- quity upon them are reverenced for this reason, because they came from the ancients. It is granted that the ancients had many wise and great men among them, and some of their writings,. which time had delivered down to us, are truly valuable ; but those writers lived rather in the infant state of the world ; and the philosophers, as well as the polite authors of our age, are properly the elders, who have seen the mistakes of the younger ages of mankind, and corrected them by observation and expe- rience. Some borrow all their religion from the fathers of the Christian church ; or from their synods or councils; but he that will read Monsieur Dei11e on the use of the fathers, will find many reasons why they are by no means fit to dictate our faith, since we have the gospel of Christ, and the writings of the Apos- tles and Prophets in our own hands. Some persons believe everÿ thing that their kindred, their parents, and their tutors believe. The veneration and the love which they have for their ancestors, incline them to swallow down all their opinions at once, without examining what truth or false- hood there is io them. Men take up their principles' by inheri tance, and defend them as they would their estates, because they are born heirs to them. I freely grant, that parents are appoint- ed by God end nature to teach us all the sentiments and practi -, ces of our younger years; and happy are those whose parents lead them into the paths of wisdom and truth I I grant farther?
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