OF ADHERENCE UNTO AN

TIQUITY.

BUT the mortalest enemy unto knowledge, and that which hath done the greatest execution upon truth, hath been a peremptory adhesion unto authority, and more especially the establishing of our belief upon the dictates of antiquity. For (as every capacity may observe) most men of ages present so superstitiously do look on ages past, that the authorities of the one exceed the reasons of the other; whose persons indeed, being far removed from our times, their works, which seldom with us pass uncontrolled either by contemporaries or immediate successors, are now become out of the distance of envies; and the farther removed from present times, are conceived to approach the nearer unto truth itself. Now hereby methinks we manifestly delude ourselves, and widely walk out of the track of truth.

For, first, men hereby impose a thraldom on their times, which the ingenuity of no age should endure, or indeed the presumption of any did ever yet enjoin. Thus Hippocrates, about two thousand years ago, conceived it no injustice either to examine or refute the doctrines of his predecessors; Galen the like, and

Aristotle most of any. Yet did not any of these conceive themselves infallible, or set down their dictates as verities irrefragable; but when they either deliver their own inventions or reject other men's opinions, they proceed with judgment and ingenuity, establishing their assertions, not only with great solidity, but submitting them also unto the correction of future discovery.

Secondly, men that adore times past, consider not that those times were once present; that is, as our own are at this instant, and we ourselves unto those to come as they unto us at present. As we rely on them, even so will those on us, and magnify us hereafter, who at present condemn ourselves; which very absurdity is daily committed amongst us even in the esteem and censure of our own times. And, to speak impartially, old men, from whom we should expect the greatest example of wisdom, do most exceed in this point of folly; commending the days of their youth they scarce. remember, at least well understood not; extolling those times their younger years have heard their fathers condemn, and condemning those times the gray heads of their posterity shall commend. And thus is it the humor of many heads to extol the days of their forefathers and declaim against the wickedness of times pres

ent; which notwithstanding they cannot handsomely do, without the borrowed help and satires of times past, condemning the vices of their times by the expressions of vices in times which they commend, which cannot but argue the community of vice in both. Horace, therefore, Juvenal, and Persius were no prophets, although their lines did seem to indigitate and point at our times. There is a certain list of vices committed in all ages and declaimed against by all authors, which will last as long as human nature; or digested into common-places may serve for any theme, and never be out of date until doomsday.

THE ERRONEOUS DISPOSITION OF THE PEOPLE.

As for popular errors, they are more nearly founded upon an erroneous inclination of the people, as being the most deceptible part of mankind, and ready with open arms to receive the encroachments of error; which condition of theirs, although deducible from many grounds, yet shall we evidence it but from a few, and such as most nearly and undeniably declare their natures.

How unequal discerners of truth they are, and openly exposed unto error, will first appear from their unqualified intellectuals, unable to umpire the difficulty of its dissensions. For error, to speak largely, is a false judgment of things, or an assent unto falsity. Now whether the object whereunto they deliver up their assent be true or false, they are incompetent judges.

For the assured truth of things is derived from the principles of knowledge, and causes which determine their verities; whereof their uncultivated understandings scarce holding any theory, they are but bad discerners of verity, and in the numerous track of error but casually do hit the point and unity of truth.

Their understanding is so feeble in the discernment of falsities and averting the errors of reason, that it submitteth unto the fallacies of sense, and is unable to rectify the error of its sensations. Thus the greater part of mankind, having but one eye of sense and reason, conceive the earth far bigger than the sun, the fixed stars lesser than the moon, their figures plain, and their spaces from earth equidistant. For thus their sense informeth them, and herein their reason cannot rectify them; and therefore hopelessly continuing in mistakes, they live and die in their absurdities, passing their days

in perverted apprehensions and conceptions of the world, derogatory unto God and the wisdom of the creation.

Again, being so illiterate in the point of intellect and their sense so incorrected, they are farther indisposed ever to attain unto truth, as commonly proceeding in those ways which have most reference unto sense, and wherein there lieth most notable and popular delusion, For being unable to wield the intellectual arms of reason, they are fain to betake themselves unto wasters and the blunter weapons of truth, affecting the gross and sensible ways of doctrine, and such as will not consist with strict and subtile reason. Thus unto them a piece of rhetoric is a sufficient argument of logic, an apologue of Æsop beyond a syllogism in Barbara; parables than propositions, and proverbs more powerful than demonstrations. And therefore are they led rather by example than precept, receiving persuasions from visible inducements before intellectual instructions. And therefore also they judge of human actions by the event; for being uncapable of operable circumstances or rightly to judge the prudentiality of affairs, they only gaze upon the visible success, and thereafter condemn or cry up the whole progression. And so from this ground in the lecture of Holy Scripture, their appre