God himself came on earth to publish, which was confirmed by miracles, and recorded by divine infpiration, fubject to the fame viciffitudes, and the fame corruptions. ESSAY ESSAY THE FOURT H, SECTION I. ALL men men are apt to have an high conceit of their own understandings, and to be tenacious of the opinions they profefs; and yet almost all men are guided by the understandings of others, not by their own, and may be faid more truly to adopt, than to beget, their opinions. Nurfes, parents, pædagogues, and after them all, and above them all, that univerfal pædagogue cuftom, fill the mind with notions which it had no fhare in framing, which it receives as paffively, as it receives the impreffions of outward objects, and which, left to itself, it would never have framed perhaps, or would have examined afterwards. Thus prejudices are established by education, and habits by cuftom. We are taught to think what others think, not how to think for ourselves; and whilft the memory is loaded, the understanding remains unexercifed, or exercifed in fuch trammels as conftrain its motions, and direct its pace, till that which was artificial becomes in fome fort natural, and the mind can go no other. Wrong notions, and false principles, begot in this manner manner by authority, may be called properly enough the bastards of the mind; and yet they are nurfed, and preserved by it as if they were the legitimate iffue; Nay they are even deemed to be fo by the mind itself. The mind grows fond of them accordingly, and this mistaken application of selflove makes men zealous to defend, and propagate them by the fame kind of authority, and by every other fort of impofition. Thus they are perpetuated, and as they contract the ruft of antiquity they grow to be more refpected. The fact that was delivered at first on very fufpicious teftimony, becomes indifputable; and the opinion that was fcarce problematical becomes a demonftrated propofition. Nor is this at all wonderful. We look at original, through intermediate authority, and it appears greater and better than it is really, juft as objects of fight are fometimes magnified by an hazy medium. Men who would have been deemed ignorant, or mad, or knavish, if they had been our cotemporaries, are reverenced as prodigies of learning, of wisdom, and of virtue, because they lived many centuries ago. When their writings come down to pofterity, pofterity might judge indeed of their characters on better grounds than report and tradition: but the fame authority, which fhewed them in a half light, fcreens them in a full one. Paraphrafes and commentaries accompany their writings. Their mistakes are excufed, their contradictions are seemingly reconciled, their abfurdities are varnished over, their puerilities are reprefented as marks of a moft amiable fimplicity, their enthufiaftical rants as the language of the moft fublime genius, or even of inspiration; and as this is frequently done with much skilful plaufibility, fo it is always aided by the ftrong prepoffeffions that have been created in their favor. The first traditional authorities that handed down fantastic fcience, and erroneous opinions, |