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

hensions are commonly confined unto the literal sense of the text; from whence have ensued the gross and duller sort of heresies. For not attaining the deuteroscopy and second intention of the words, they are fain to omit their superconsequences, coherencies, figures, or tropologies, and are not sometimes persuaded by fire beyond their literalities. And therefore all things invisible but unto intellectual discernments, to humor the grossness of their comprehensions, have been degraded from their proper forms, and God himself dishonored into manual expressions. And so likewise, being unprovided or unsufficient for higher speculations, they will always betake themselves unto sensible representations, and can hardly be restrained the dulness of idolatry; a sin or folly not only derogatory unto God, but men ; overthrowing their reason as well as his divinity; in brief, a reciprocation, or rather an inversion of the creation, making God one way, as he made us another; that is, after our image, as he made us after his own.

Moreover, their understanding, thus weak in itself, and perverted by sensible delusions, is yet farther impaired by the dominion of their appetite, that is, the irrational and brutal part of the soul; which, lording it over the sovereign faculty, interrupts the actions of that noble

part, and chokes those tender sparks which Adam hath left them of reason; and therefore they do not only swarm with errors, but vices depending thereon. Thus they commonly affect no man any farther than he deserts his reason or complies with their aberrancies. Hence they embrace not virtue for itself, but its reward; and the argument from pleasure or utility is far more powerful than that from virtuous honesty; which Mahomet and his contrivers well understood, when he set out the felicity of his heaven by the contentments of flesh and the delights of sense, slightly passing over the accomplishment of the soul and the beatitude of that part which earth and visibilities too weakly affect. But the wisdom of our Saviour and the simplicity of his truth proceeded another way, defying the popular provisions of happiness from sensible expectations, placing his felicity in things removed from sense, and the intellectual enjoyment of God. And therefore the doctrine of the one was never afraid of universities, or endeavoured the banishment of learning like the other. And though Galen doth sometimes nibble at Moses, and beside the Apostate Christian, some heathens have questioned his philosophical part or treatise of the creation; yet is there surely no reasonable Pagan that will not admire the rational and

well-grounded precepts of Christ, whose life, as it was conformable unto his doctrine, so was that unto the highest rules of reason, and must therefore flourish in the advancement of learning, and the perfection of parts best able to comprehend it.

Again, their individual imperfections being great, they are moreover enlarged by their aggregation; and being erroneous in their single numbers, once huddled together they will be error itself. For being a confusion of knaves and fools and a farraginous concurrence of all conditions, tempers, sexes, and ages, it is but natural if their determinations be monstrous and many ways inconsistent with truth. And therefore wise men have always applauded their own judgment in the contradiction of that of the people; and their soberest adversaries have ever afforded them the style of fools and madmen; and to speak impartially, their actions have often made good these epithets. Had Orestes been judge, he would not have acquitted that Lystrian rabble of madness, who, upon a visible miracle, falling into so high a conceit of Paul and Barnabas, that they termed the one Jupiter, the other Mercurius; that they brought oxen and garlands, and were hardly restrained from sacrificing unto them; did notwithstanding suddenly after fall upon Paul, and