Let no man, upon a weak conceit of sobriety, or an ill-applied moderation, think or maintain, that a man can search too far, or be too well studied in the book of God's word or in the book of God's works, divinity or philosophy; but rather let men endeavor an endless progress or proficience in both. Only let men beware, that they apply both to charity, and not to swelling; to use, and not to ostentation; and, again, that they do not unwisely mingle or confound these learnings together. LORD BACON: Advancement of Learning, book i.; in Works, vol. i. p. 164.

The old sceptics that never would profess that they had found a truth, yet showed the best way to search for any, when they doubted as well of what those of the dogmatical sects too credulously received for infallible principles, as they did of the newest conclusions. They were indeed, questionless, too nice, and deceived themselves with the nimbleness of their own sophisms, that permitted no kind of established truth. But, plainly, he that avoids their disputing levity, yet, being able, takes to himself their liberty of inquiry, is in the only way that in all kinds of studies leads and lies open even to the sanctuary of truth; while others, that are servile to common opinion and vulgar suppositions, can rarely hope to be admitted nearer than into the base court of her temple, which too speciously often counterfeits her inmost sanctuary. — JOHN SELDEN: History of Tithes.

If you must never change your first opinions or apprehensions, how will you grow in understanding? Will you be no wiser at age than you were at childhood, and after long study and experience than you were before? Nature and grace do tend to increase. Indeed, if you should be never so peremptory in your opinions, you cannot resolve to hold them to the end; for light is powerful, and may change you, whether you will or no: you cannot tell what that light will do, which you never saw. But prejudice will make you resist the light, and make it harder for you to understand. I speak this upon much experience and observation. Our first, unripe apprehensions of things will certainly be greatly changed, if we are studious, and of improved understandings. For my own part, my judgment is altered from many of my youthful, confident apprehensions; and, where it holdeth the same conclusion, it rejecteth abundance of the arguments, as vain, which once it rested in. And where I keep to the same conclusions and arguments, my apprehension of them is not the same, but I see more satisfying light in many things which I took but upon trust before. And if I had resolved to hold to all my

first opinions, I must have forborne most of my studies, and lost much truth, which I have discovered, and not made that my own which I did hold; and I must have resolved to live and die a child. ... Ignorance, and ungrounded or ill-grounded persuasions in matters of religion, are the cause that abundance of people delude themselves with the empty name and dead profession of a faith and religion which they were never indeed possessed of. I know there are low degrees of knowledge, comparatively, in many that are true believers; and that there may be much love and holiness where knowledge is very small or narrow as to the objective extent of it; and that there is a knowledge that puffeth up, while charity edifieth; and that, in many that have the narrower knowledge, there may be the fastest faith and adherence to the truth, which will conquer in the time of trial. But yet I must tell you, that the religion which you profess is not indeed your own religion, if you know not what it is, and know not in some measure the true grounds and reasons why you should be of that religion. If you have only learned to say your creed, or repeat the words of Christian doctrine, while you do not truly understand the sense; or if you have no better reasons why you profess the Christian faith than the custom of the country, or the command of princes or governors, or the opinion of your teachers, or the example of your parents, friends, or neighbors,—you are not Christians indeed. You have a human belief or opinion, which objectively is true; but, subjectively in yourselves, you have no true, divine belief. RICHARD BAXTER: Christian Directory; in Practical Works, vol. ii. pp. 129, 170.

Freedom of inquiry is equally open to you and to myself: it is equally laudable in us, when conducted with impartiality and decorum ; and it must equally tend to the enlargement of knowledge and the improvement of virtue, while our sincerity does not betray us into precipitation, and while our zeal does not stifle within us the amiable and salutary sentiments of mutual forbearance. Upon the points in which we dissent from each other, arguments will always secure the attention of the wise and good; whereas inyective must disgrace the cause which we may respectively wish to support.

Freedom of inquiry in private persons, when far extended, and quite unshackled by artificial restraints, is favorable to the discovery of truth, and, through the progressive influence of truth upon practice, is eventually conducive to the best interests of society. - DR. SAMUEL PARR: Works, vol. iii. pp. 301–2; and vol. iv. pp. 541–2.

The only means by which religious knowledge can be advanced is freedom of inquiry. An opinion is not therefore false because it contradicts received notions; but, whether true or false, let it be submitted to a fair examination. Truth must, in the end, be a gainer by it, and appear with the greater evidence. BISHOP LOWTH: Visitation Ser.

When the right of unlimited inquiry is exerted, the human faculties will be upon the advance: where it is relinquished, they will be of necessity at a stand, and will probably decline. ROBERT HALL : Apology for the Freedom of the Press; in Works, vol. ii. p. 52.

Truth is every man's concernment, every man's right, and every man's most necessary possession. If every man be obliged, as he will answer it to God, to possess himself of truth, he must be free; free not only to think, but to speak; free to move; free to go in quest of truth; free to bring it home; free to confer with his fellows concerning it; and free to impart what he has acquired. ISAAC TAYLOR: Lectures on Spiritual Christianity, pp. 57-8.

It is surely the birthright of every human being to think for himself. He is amenable alone to conscience and to God for his religious sentiments; and whoever attempts to legislate for the free-born soul, and coerce the faith of another, is perpetrating one of the most detestable of crimes, robbing man of his liberty, and God of his authority. In such a case, submission to man is treason against Heaven. DR. F. A. Cox: Life of Melancthon, p. 280.

Reason and Scripture concur in teaching, that it is at once the privilege and the duty of every man to investigate the truth for himself; to employ on religion, as on other subjects, the mental faculties which his Maker has bestowed on him, and the bestowal of which is a sufficient indication that they were intended to be exercised. . . . How monstrous, then, and intolerable the tyranny of those who demand a dominion disclaimed by apostles! Any scheme, indeed, which interferes with the prerogative of every individual to judge for himself in matters of religion, is at once irrational and impious ; —— irrational, as prohibiting the employment of reason on the most momentous of all subjects, and turning man into a brute; and impious, as destructive of the very nature of religion, as rendering it not "a reasonable service,” a mental employment, a homage rendered with "the understanding and the spirit," and suited to the nature of the Being to whom it is rendered, and of the being who renders it, but a mere bodily service, a mechanical exercise. — DR. ROBERT BALMER: The Scripture Principles of Unity; in Essays on Christian Union, p. 32.

We are to seek and search, not with our eyes half closed, as though we were fearful lest we should see too much of truth, lest we should look beyond God, into a region where God is not. In this respect also, seeing that we have such a High Priest, who himself is passed into the heavens, we may approach boldly to the temple of wisdom; for he who has delivered our hearts and souls has also delivered our minds from the bondage of earth. Therefore let no man say to the waves of thought, "Thus far shalt thou go, and no further." CHARLES HARE: The Victory of Faith, pp. 59, 60.

JULIUS

We may learn from our Lord's appeal to miraculous proofs, as the foundation of his claim to authority, how great is the mistake of those who imagine that Christian faith consists in an uninquiring acquiescence, without any reason for it; or that at least there is the more virtue in a man's faith, the less it is founded on evidence.... The faith which Jesus and the apostles commended in their hearers consisted in a readiness to listen fairly to what was said, in an ingenuous openness to conviction, and in an humble acquiescence in what they had good ground for believing to have come from God, however adverse to their prejudices and wishes, and habits of thought; in a firm trust in what they were rationally convinced God had promised, however strange, and foreign from their expectations and conjectures. And yet there have been persons in various ages of the church—and the present is not without them who represent Christian faith as a thing not merely different from this, but even opposite to it. A man's determination to adhere to the religion of his fathers, merely on the ground that it was theirs, and that it has long existed, and that he has been assured by persons superior to him in rank, and in presumed learning, that the authority of the Bible, and the meaning of it, are such as they tell him, this has been represented as the most perfect Christian faith! Such grounds for adhering to a religion have been described as not merely sufficient for the most unlearned classes, not merely as the utmost these are capable of attaining, but as absolutely the best; as better than the most rational conviction of a cultivated understanding, that has long been sedulously occupied in "proving all things, and holding fast that which is right." Now, this kind of (falsely called) faith, whose usurped title serves to deceive the unthinking, is precisely what is characterized in Scripture as want of faith. For I need hardly remind the reader, that the unbelieving Jews and Pagans of old were those who rejected the "many infallible proofs " which God set before them, because they had resolved to adhere, at all hazards, to the creed

of their fathers, and to take the word of their chief priests or civil magistrates as decisive, and to stop their ears against all evidence, and drown reason by clamor. - ARCHBISHOP WHATELY: Essays on Dangers to Christian Faith, pp. 125–9.

There is a wide difference in the practical activity of a truth passively acquiesced in, and one attained by a process of inquiry and. reflection. The hold of the former upon the understanding and the heart is feeble and fitful, compared with the tenure of that which is valued as the result of toil, the achievement of the understanding, the happy settlement of vexed questions whose agitation has roused every faculty of the mind, and stirred every feeling of the heart. The great multitude, who assent to the authority of Scripture because they know no reason to the contrary, remain, as we see every day, to a most lamentable extent uninfluenced by its teachings, utterly heedless of its solemn declarations. But when did a man become a Christian from investigation of the claims of Christianity, without bowing his mind and soul to its authority? DR. T. E. BOND, jun., in Methodist Quarterly Review for April, 1853; fourth series, vol. v. p. 259.

Why has he [our Master] given us the principle of intellectual curiosity? Most certainly that he might stimulate us in the path of intellectual and religious knowledge. If we stifle this curiosity, if we bury it up, if we have not an enthusiasm even, in the occupying of all the talents with which God has endued us, then we are not consecrating ourselves to him. We do not give him our best offerings. We withhold the freshest fruits.-B. B. EDWARDS: Writings, vol. ii. p. 477.

God has written upon our minds the ineffaceable law that they search after the truth, whatever, wherever it be, however arduous the toil for it, whithersoever it may lead. Let it come. Even if it should promise nothing to the utilitarian, there are yet within us the mirabiles amores to find it out. A sound heart is alive with this curiosity, and will not retain its health while its aspirations are rebuffed. It gives no unbroken peace to the man who thwarts his reasoning instincts; for, amid all its conflicting demands, it is at times importunate for a reasonable belief. When it is famished by an idle intellect, it loses its tone, becomes bigoted rather than inquisitive, and takes up with theological fancies which reduce it still lower. When it is fed by an inquiring mind, it is enlivened, and reaches out for an expanded faith. EDWARDS A. PARK: Theology of the Intellect and of the Feelings; in Bibliotheca Sacra for July, 1850; vol. vii. p. 543.