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Yet here I would lay down this caution, that there are several objects of which we have not a clear and distinct idea, much less an adequate or comprehensive one, and yet we cannot call the names of these things words without ideas; such are the infinity and eternity of God himself, the union of our own soul and body, the union of the divine and human natures in Jesus Christ, the operation of the Holy Spirit on the mind of man, &c. These ought not to be called words without ideas, for there is sufficient evidence for the reality and certainty of the existence of their objects; though there is some confusion in our clearest conceptions of them; and our ideas of them, though imperfect, are yet sufficient to converse about them, so far as we have need, and to determine so much as is necessary for our own faith and practice.

Direct. I. Do not suppose that the natures or essences of things always differ from one another, as much as their names do. There are various purposes in human life, for which we put very different names on the same thing, or on things whose natures are near a-kin; and thereby oftentimes, by making a new nominal species, we are ready to deceive ourselves with the idea of another real species of beings: and those, whose understandings are led away by the mere sound of words, fancy the nature of those things to be very different whose names are so, and judge of them accordingly.

I may borrow a remarkable instance for my purpose almost out of every garden, which contains a variety of plants in it. Most or all plants agree in this, that they have a root, a stalk, leaves, buds, blossoms, and seeds: but the gardener ranges them under very different names, as though they were really different kinds of beings, merely because of the different use and service to which they are applied by men: as for instance, those plants whose roots are caten shall appropriate the name of roots to themselves; such are carrots, turnips, radishes, &c. If the leaves are of chief use to us, then we call them herbs; as sage, mint, thyme: if the leaves are eaten raw, they are termed sallad; as lettuce, purslain: if

boiled, they become pot-herbs; as spinage, coleworts; and some of those same plants, which are pot-herbs in one family, are sallad in another. If the buds are

made our food, they are called heads, or tops; so cabbage-heads, heads of asparagus and artichoaks. If the blossom be of most importance, we call it a flower; such are daisies, tulips, and carnations,

which are the mere blossoms of those plants. If the husk or seeds are eaten, they are called the fruits of the ground, as pease, beans, strawberries, &c. If any part of the plant be of known and common use to us in medicine, we call it a physical herb, as carduus, Scurvy-grass; but if we count no part useful, we call it a weed, and throw it out of the garden; and yet, perhaps, our next neighbour knows some valuable property and use of it; he plants it in his garden, and gives it the title of an herb, or a flower. You see here how small is the real distinction of these several plants, considered in their general nature as the lesser vegetables: yet what very different ideas we vulgarly form concerning them, and make different species of them, chiefly because of the different names given them.

Now when things are set in this clear light, it appears how ridiculous it would be for two persons to contend whether dandelion be an herb, or a weed; whether it be a pot-herb or sallad; when, by the custom or fancy of different families, this one plant obtains all these names according to the several uses of it, and the value that is put upon it.

Note here, that I find no manner of fault with the variety of names which are given to several plants, according to the various uses we make of them. But I would not have our judgments imposed upon hereby, to think that these mere nominal species, viz. herbs, sallad, and weeds, become three really dif ferent species of beings, on this account, that they have different names and uses. But I proceed to other instances.

It has been the custom of mankind, when they have been angry with any thing, to add a new ill name to it, that they may convey thereby a hateful

idea of it, though the nature of the thing still abides the same. So the papists call the protestants heretics a profane person calls a man of piety a precisian: and in the times of the civil war in the last century, the royalists called the parliamentarians fanatics, roundheads, and sectaries; and they, in requital, called the royalists malignants: but the partizans on each side were really neither better nor worse for these names.

It has also been a frequent practice on the other hand, to put new favourable names upon ill ideas, on purpose to take off the odium of them. But notwithstanding all these flattering names and titles, a man of profuse generosity is but a spendthrift; a natural son is a bastard still; a gallant is an adulterer; and a lady of pleasure is a whore.

Direct. III. Take heed of believing the nature and essence of two or more things to be certainly the same, because they may have the same name given them. This has been an unhappy and fatal occasion of a thousand mistakes in the natural, in the civil, and in the religious affairs of life, both amongst the vulgar and the learned. I shall give two or three instances chiefly in the matters of natural philosophy, having hinted several dangers of this kind relating to theology in the foregoing discourse concerning equivocal words.

Our elder philosophers have generally made use of the word soul to signify that principle whereby a plant grows, and they call it the vegetative soul: the principle of animal motion of a brute has been likewise called a soul, and we have been taught to name it the sensitive soul: they have also given the name of soul to that superior principle in man, whereby he thinks, judges, reasons, &c. and though they distinguished this by the honourable title of the rational soul, yet in common discourse and writing we leave out the words vegetative, sensitive, and rational, and make the word soul serve for all these principles: thence we are led early into this imagination, that there is a sort of spiritual being in plants and in brutes, like that in men. Whereas if we did but ab

stract and separate these things from words, and compare the cause of growth in a plant with the cause of reasoning in man (without the word soul), we shall never think that these two principles were at all like one another; nor should we, perhaps, so easily and peremptorily conclude that brutes need an intelligent mind to perform their animal actions.

Another instance may be the word of life, which being attributed to plants, to brutes, and to men, and in each of them ascribed to the soul, has very easily betrayed us from our infancy into this mistake, that the spirit, or mind, or thinking principle in man, is the spring of vegetative and animal life to his body: whereas it is evident, that if the spirit or thinking principle of man gave life to his auimal nature, the way to save men from dying would not be to use medicines, but to persuade the spirit to abide in the body..

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I might derive a third instance from the word heat; which is used to signify the sensation we have when we are near the fire, as well as cause of that sensation which is in the fire itself; and thence we conclude from our infancy, that there is a sort of heat in the fire resembling our own sensation, or the heat which we feel whereas in the fire there is nothing but little particles of matter of such particular shapes, sizes, situations, and motions as are fitted to impress such motions on our flesh or nerves as excite the sense of heat. Now if this cause of our sensation in the fire had been always called by a distinct name, perhaps we had not been so rooted in this mistake, that the fire is hot with the same sort of heat that we feel. This will appear with more evidence, when we consider that we are secure from the same mistake when there have been two different names allotted to our sensation, and to the cause of it; as, we do not say, pain is in the fire that burns us, or in the knife that cuts and wounds us: for we call it burning in the fire, cutting in the knife, and pain only when it is in ourselves.

Numerous instances of this kind might be derived from the words sweet, sour, loud, shrill, and almost all

the sensible qualities, whose real natures we mistake from our very infancy, and we are ready to suppose them to be the same in us, and in the bodies that cause them; partly because the words which signify our own sensations, are applied also to siguify those unknown shapes and motions of the little corpuscles, which excite and cause those sensations.

Direct. IV. In conversation or reading be diligent to find out the true sense, or distinct idea, which the speaker or writer affixes to his words; and especially to those words which are the chief subject of his discourse. As far as possible take heed, lest you put more or fewer ideas into one word, than the person did when he wrote or spoke; and endeavour that your ideas of every word may be the same as his were; then you will judge better of what he speaks or writes.

It is for want of this that men quarrel in the dark, and that there are so many contentions in the several sciences, and especially in divinity; multitudes of them arise from a mistake of the true sense or complete meaning in which words are used by the writer or speaker; and hereby sometimes they seem to agree, when they really differ in their sentiments; and sometimes they seem to differ, when they really agree. Let me give an instance of both.

When one man by the word church shall understand all that believe in Christ, and another by the word church means only the church of Rome, they may both assent to this proposition, there is no salvation out of the church, and yet their inward sentiments may be widely different.

Again, if one writer shall affirm that virtue added to faith is sufficient to make a Christian, and another shall as zealously deny this proposition, they seem to differ widely in words, and yet, perhaps, they may both really agree in sentiment: if by the word virtue, the affirmer intends our whole duty to God and man; and the denier by the word virtue means only courage, or at most our duty towards our neighbour, without including in the idea of it the duty which we owe to

God.

Many such sort of contentions as these are, traced

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