CHAPTER IIi. 443 reverente and stronger faith do the people believe whatever they teach them yet it is too often evident, that riches, and domi- nions, and high titles in church or state, have no manner of pre- tence to truth and certainty, wisdom and goodness, above the rest of mortals, because these superiorities in this world are not always conferred according to Merit. I confess, where a man of wisdom and years, of observation and experience, gives us his opinion and advice in matters of the civil or the moral life ; reason tells us we should pay a great at- tention to him, and it is probable he may be in the right. Where a man of long exercise in piety speaks of practical religion, there is a due deference to be paid to his sentiments ; and the same we may say concerning an ingenious man long versed in any art or science, he may justly expect due regard when he speaks of his own affairs and proper business. But in other things each of these may be ignorant enough, notwithstanding all their piety and years, and particular skill ; nor even in their own proper pro- vince are they to be believed in every thing without reserve, and without examination. To free ourselves from these prejudices, it is sufficient to remember,, that there is no rank nor character among mankind, which lias any just pretence to sway the judgments of other men by their authority ; for there have been persons of the saine rank and character who have maintained different and contrary senti- ments ; but all these can never be true, and therefore the mere name or reputation that any of them possesses, is not a sufficient evidence of truth. Shall we believe the ancients in philosophy? But some of the ancients were Stoics, some Peripatetics, some Platonics, and some Epicureans, some Cynics, and some Sceptics. Shall we judge of matters of the Christian faith by the fathers, or pri- mitive writers, for three or four hundred years after Christ? But they often contradicted one another, and themselves too; and what is worse, they sometimes contradicted the scripture it- self. Now among all these different and contrary sentiments in philosophy and religion, which of the ancients must we believe, for we cannot believe them all ? Again, To believe in all things as our predecessors did, is the ready way to keep mankind in an everlasting state of infancy, and to lay an eternal bar against ail the improvements of our reason and our happiness. Had the present age of philosophers satisfied themselves with the substantial forms and occult quali- ties of Aristotle, with the solid spheres, eccentrics, and epicycles of Ptolemy, and the ancient astronomers ; then the great Lord Bacon, Copernicus, and Descartes, with the greater Sir Isaac Newton, Mr. Locke, and 3îr. Boyle, had risen in our world in vain. We must have blundered on still in successive ge-
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