the son of a carpenter, was also the Son of God. And, because St. Paul was of a little stature, a mean presence, and his voice contemptible, some of the Corinthians were tempted to doubt whether he was inspired or no.

This prejudice is cured by a longer acquaintance with the world, and a just observation that things are sometimes better, and sometimes worse than they appear to be. We ought, therefore, to restrain our excessive forwardnesss to form our opinion of persons or things before we have opportunity to search into them more perfectly. Remember that a grey beard does not make a philosopher; all is not gold that glitters; and a rough diamond may be worth an im

mense sum.

II. A mixture of different qualities in the same thing, is another temptation to judge amiss. We are ready to be carried away by that quality which strikes the first or the strongest impressions upon us, and we judge of the whole object according to that quality, regardless of all the rest: or sometimes we colour over all the other qualities, with that one tincture, whether it be bad or good.

When we have just reason to admire a man for his virtues, we are sometimes inclined not only to neglect his weaknesses, but even to put a good colour upon them, and to think them amiable. When we read a book that has many excellent truths in it, and divine sentiments, we are tempted to approve not only that whole book, but even all the writings of that author. When a poet, an orator, or a painter, has performed admirably in several illustrious pieces, we sometimes also admire his very errors, we mistake his blunders · for beauties, and are so ignorantly fond as to copy after them.

It is this prejudice that has rendered so many great 'scholars perfect bigots, and inclined them to defend Homer or Horace, Livy or Cicero, in all their mistakes, and vindicate all the follies of their favourite author. It is this that tempts some great writers to support the sayings of almost all the ancient fathers

of the church, and admire them in their very

reveries.

On the other hand, if an author has professed heretical sentiments in religion, we throw our scorn upon every thing he writes, we despise even his critical or mathematical learning, and will hardly allow him common sense. If a poem has some blemishes in it, there is a set of false critics who decry it universally, and will allow no beauties there.

This sort of prejudice is relieved by learning to distinguish things well, and not to judge in the lump.There is scarce any thing in the world of nature or art, in the world of morality or religion, that is perfectly uniform. There is a mixture of wisdom and folly, vice and virtue, good and evil, both in men and things. We should remember that some persons have great wit, and little judgment; others are judicious, but not witty. Some are good humoured without compliment; others have all the formalities of complaisance, but no good humour. We ought to know that one man may be vicious and learned, while another has virtue without learning. That many a man thinks admirably well who has a poor utterance: while others have a charming manner of speech, but their thoughts are trifling and impertinent. Some are good neighbours, and courteous and charitable toward men, who have no piety toward God; others are truly religious, but of morose natural tempers. Some excellent sayings are found in very silly books, and some silly thoughts appear in books of value. We should neither praise nor dispraise by wholesale, but separate the good from the evil, and judge of them apart: the accuracy of a good judgment consists much in making such distinctions.

Yet let it be noted too, that in common discourse we usually denominate persons and things according to the major part of their character. He is to be called a wise man who has but few follies: he is a good philosopher who knows much of nature, and for the most part reasons well in matters of human science; and that book should be esteemed

well written, which has much more of good sense in it than it has of impertinence.

IV. Though a thing be uniform in its own nature, yet the different lights in which it may be placed, and the different views in which it appears to us, will be ready to excite in us mistaken judgments concerning it. Let an erect cone be placed in a horizontal plane, at a great distance from the eye, and it appears a plain triangle; but we shall judge that very cone to be nothing but a flat circle, if its base be obverted towards us. Set a common round plate a little obliquely before our eyes afar off, and we shall think it an oval figure; but if the very edge of it be turned towards us, we shall take it for a straight line. So when we view the several folds of changeable silk, we pronounce this part red, and that yellow, because of its different position to the light, though the silk latd smooth in one light appears all of one colour.

When we survey the miseries of mankind, and think of the sorrows of millions, both on earth and in hell, the divine government has a terrible aspect, and we may be tempted to think hardly even of God himself: but if we view the profusion of his bounty and grace amongst his creatures on earth, or the happy spirits in heaven, we shall have so exalted an idea of his goodness as to forget his vengeance. Some men dwell entirely upon the promises of his gospel, and think him all mercy: others, under a melancholy frame, dwell upon his terrors and his threatenings, and are overwhelmed with the thought of his seve rity and vengeance, as though there were no mercy in him.

The true method of delivering ourselves from this prejudice is to view a thing on all sides, to compare all the various appearances of the same thing with one another, and let each of them have its full weight in the balance of our judgment, before we fully determine our opinion. It was by this means that the modern astronomers came to find out that the planet Saturn hath a flat broad circle round its globe, which is called its ring, by observing the different appear

ances as a narrow or a broader oval, or as it sometimes seems to be a strait line, in the different parts of its twenty-nine year's revolution through the ecliptic, And if we take the same just and religious survey of the great and blessed God in all the discoveries of his vengeance and his mercy, we shall at last conclude him to be both just and good.

V. The causal association of many of our ideas becomes the spring of another prejudice or rash judg ment, to which we are sometimes exposed. If in our younger years we have taken medicines that have been nauseous, when any medicine whatsoever is afterward proposed to us, under sickness, we immediately judge it nauseous; our fancy has so closely joined these ideas together, that we know not how to separate them: then the stomach feels the disgust, aud, perhaps, refuses the only drug that can preserve life. So a child who has been let blood joins the ideas of pain and the surgeon together, that he hates the sight of the surgeon, because he thinks of his pain or if he has drank a bitter potion, he conceives a bitter idea of the cup which held it, and will drink nothing out of that cup.

It is for the same reason that the bulk of the com mon people are so superstitiously fond of the Psalms translated by Hopkins and Sternhold, and think them sacred and divine, because they have been now for more than an hundred years bound up in the same covers with our bibles.

The best relief against this prejudice of association, is to consider, whether there be any natural and necessary connection between those ideas which fancy, custom, or chance hath thus joined together: and if nature has not joined them, let our judgment correct the folly of our imagination, and separate those ideas again.

SECT. II.-Prejudices arising from Words.

Our ideas and words are so linked together, that while we judge of things according to words, we are led into several mistakes. These may be distributed

under two general heads, (viz.) such as arise from single words or phrases, or such as arise from words joined in speech, and composing a discourse.

I. The most eminent and remarkable errors of the first kind are these three. (1.) When our words are insignificant, and have no ideas; as when the mystical divines talk of the prayer of silence, the superna. tural and passive night of the soul, the vacuity of powers, the suspension of all thoughts: or (2.) when our words are equivocal, and signify two or more ideas, as the words law, light, flesh, spirit, righteousness, and many other terms in scripture: or (3.) when two or three words are synonymous, and signify one idea, as regeneration and new creation in the new testament; both which mean only a change of the heart from sin to holiness; or as the Elector of Cologn and Bishop of Cologn are two titles of the same man.

These kinds of phrases are the occasions of various mistakes; but none so unhappy as those in theology: for both words without ideas, as well as synonymous and equivocal words, have been used and abused by the humours, passions, interests, or by the real ignorance and weakness of men, to beget terrible contests among Christians.

But to relieve us under all those dangers, and to remove these sort of prejudices which arise from single words or phrases, I must remit the reader to Part I. chap. iv. where I have treated about words, and to those directions which I have given concerning the definition of names, Part. I. chap. vi. sect. iii.

II. There is another sort of false judgments or mistakes, which we are exposed to by words; and that is, when they are joined in speech, and compose a discourse; and here we are in danger two ways.

The one is when a man writes good sense, or speaks much to the purpose, but he has not a happy and engaging manner of expression. Perhaps he uses coarse and vulgar words, or old, obsolete, and unfashionable language, or terms and phrases that are foreign, latinized, scholastic, very uncommon, and hard to, be understood: and this is still worse, if his sentences