CHAPTER V. 459 This may be proved also by the ill consequences that would follow:front the supposition of the contrary. If we could have po certainty of the dictates of our senses, we could never be sum of any of the common affairs and occurrences of life. Men could not transact any of their civil or moral concerns with any cer- tainty of justice ; nor indeed could we eat or drink, walk or move, with safety. Our senses direct us in all these. Again, the matters of religion depend in some measure upon the certainty of the dictates of sense ; for failh comes by bearing ; and it is to our senses that God appeals in working miracles to prove his own revelation. Now if when our eyes and ears, and other organs of sense are rightly disposed and ex- ercised about their proper objects, they were slways Gable to be deceived, there could he no knowledge of the gospel, no proof of divine revelation by visions, voices, or miracles. Our senses will discover things near us and round about us, which are necessary for our present state, with sufficient exact- pess ; and things distant also, so far as they relate to our neces- sary use of them. Nor is there need of any more accurate rules for the use of our senses in the judgment of all the common affairs of life, or even of miraculous and divine operations, than the vulgar part of mankind are sufficiently acquainted with by nature and by their own daily observations. But if we would express these rules in a more exact man- ner, how to judge by the dictates of our senses, they should be represented thus: 1. We must take care that the organs of our sense be rightly disposed, and not under the power of any distemper or consider - able decay i as for instance, that our "eyes are not tinctured with the jaundice, when we would judge of colours, lest we pro- nounce them all yellow ; that our hands are not burning in a fever, nor benumbed with frost or the palsy, when we would judge of the heat or coldness of any object : that our palate be not vitiated by any disease, or by some other improper taste, when we would judge of the true taste of any solid or liquid. This direction relates to all our senses, but the following rules chiefly refer to our sight. 2. We must observe whether the object be at a proper dis- tance ; for if it he too near or too far off; our eyes will not suffi- ciently distinguish many things which are properly the objects of sight ; and therefore (if possible) we must make nearer ap- proaches to the object, or remove farther from it, till we have obtained that due distance which gives us the clearest perception. 3. We must not employ our sight to take a full survey at once of objectsthat are too large for it ; but we must view them by parts, and then judge of the whole: nor must our senses
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