I.

Euphorbus's soul might become a brute, without ever CHAP. removing its lodging into the body of an ass. So much will the soul degenerate from itself, if not improved; and in a kind of sullenness scarce appear to be what it is, because it is not improved to what it may be.

But you will say, if this knowledge of truth be so great, so natural, so valuable a perfection of human nature, whence comes so much of the world to be overrun with ignorance and barbarism? whence come so many pretenders to knowledge, to court a cloud instead of Juno? to pretend a love to truth, and yet to fall down and worship error? If there were so great a sympathy between the soul and truth, there would be an impatient desire after it, and a most ready embracing and closing with it. We see the magnet doth not draw the iron with greater force, than it seems to run with impatience into its closest embraces. If there had been formerly so intimate an acquaintance between the soul and truth, as Socrates fancied of friends in the other world, there would be an harmonious closure upon the first appearance, and no divorce to be after made between them.

True; but then we must consider there is an intermediate state between the former acquaintance and the renewal of it, wherein all those remaining characters of mutual knowledge are sunk so deep, and lie so hid, that there needs a new fire to be kindled, to bring forth those latent figures, and make them again appear legible. And when once those tokens are produced of the former friendship, there are not more impatient longings, nor more close embraces between the touched needle and the magnet, than there are between the understanding and discovered truth. But then withal, we are to consider, that they are but few whose souls

V.

BOOK are awakened out of that lethargy they are fallen into I. in this degenerate condition: the most are so pleased

VI.

(1.).

with their sleep, that they are loth to disturb their rest; and set a higher price upon a lazy ignorance, than upon a restless knowledge. And even of those whose souls are, as it were, between sleeping and waking, what by reason of the remaining confusion of the species in their brains, what by the present dimness of their sight, and the hovering uncertain light they are to judge by, there are few that can put a difference between a mere phantasm and a real truth. Of which these rational accounts may be given, viz. why so few pretenders to knowledge do light on truth.

First, Want of an impartial diligence in the search of it. Truth now must be sought, and that with care and diligence, before we find it. Jewels do not use to lie upon the surface of the earth: highways are seldom paved with gold; what is most worth our finding, calls for the greatest search. If one that walks the streets should find some inestimable jewel, or one that travels the road meet with a bag of gold, it would be but a silly design of any to walk the street, or travel the road, in hopes to meet with such a purchase to make them rich. If some have happily light on some valuable truths, when they minded nothing less than them, must this render a diligence useless in inquiries after such? No: Truth, though she be so fair and pleasing as to draw our affections, is yet so modest as to admit of being courted; and, it may be, deny the first suit, to heighten our importunity. And certainly nothing hath oftener forbid the banns between the understanding and truth inquired after, than partiality and preoccupation of judgment, which makes men inquire more diligently after the dowry than the beauty of truth; its correspondency to their interests, than

I.

its evidence to their understandings. An useful error CHAP. hath often kept the keys of the mind for free admission, when important truths, but contrary to men's preconceptions or interest, have been forbidden entrance. Prejudice is the wrong bias of the soul, that effectually keeps it from coming near the mark of truth; nay, sets it at the greatest distance from it. There are few in the world that look after truth with their own eyes; most make use of spectacles of others' making, which makes them so seldom behold the proper lineaments in the face of truth; which the several tinctures from education, authority, custom, and predisposition, do exceedingly hinder men from discerning.

VII.

(2.)

Another reason why there are so few who find truth, when so many pretend to seek it, is, that near resemblance which error often bears to truth. It hath been well observed, that Error seldom walks abroad the world in her own raiments; she always borrows something of Truth, to make her more acceptable to the world. It hath been always the subtlety of grand deceivers, to graft their greatest errors on some mate-rial truths, to make them pass more undiscernible to all such who look more at the root on which they stand, than on the fruits which they bring forth. It will hereafter appear how most of the grossest of the heathen errors have, as Plutarch saith of the Egyptian Plutarchus fables, αμυδρὰς ἐμφάσεις τῆς ἀληθείας, some faint and Osiride,c.g. obscure resemblances of truth; nay, more than so, as most pernicious weeds are bred in the fattest soils, their most destructive principles have been founded on some necessary and important truths. Thus idolatry doth suppose the belief of the existence of a Deity; and superstition the immortality of the souls of men. The Devil could never have built his chapels, but on the same ground whereon God's temples stood; which

de Iside et

ed. Oxon.

I.

BOOK makes me far less wonder than many do, at the meeting with many expressions concerning these two grand truths in the writings of ancient heathens; knowing how willing the Devil might be to have such principles still owned in the world, which, by his depraving of them, might be the nourishers of idolatry and superstition. For the general knowledge of a Divine nature, supposing men ignorant of the true God, did only lay a foundation to erect his idolatrous temples upon; and the belief of the soul's surviving the body after death, without knowledge of the true way of attaining happiness, did make men more eager of embracing those rites and ceremonies, which came with a pretence of shewing the way to a blessed immortality.

VIII.

Which may be a most probable reason, why philosophy and idolatry did increase so much together as they did; for though right reason, fully improved, would have overthrown all those cursed and idolatrous practices among the heathens; yet reason, only discerning some general notions, without their particular application and improvement, did only dispose the most ordinary sort of people to a more ready entertainment of the most gross idolatry. For hereby they discerned the necessity of some kind of worship, but could not find out the right way of it; and therefore they greedily followed that which was commended to them, by such who did withal agree with them in the common sentiments of human nature: nay, and those persons themselves who were the great maintainers of the sublimer notions concerning God and the soul of man, were either the great instruments of advancing that horrid superstition among them, as Orpheus and Apollonius, or very forward compliers with it, as many of the philosophers were. Although withal it cannot be denied to have been a wonderful discovery of Divine

I.

Providence, by these general notions to keep waking CHAP. the inward senses of men's souls, that thereby it might appear, when Divine revelation should be manifested to them, that it brought nothing contrary to the common principles of human nature, but did only rectify the depravations of it, and clearly shew men that way which they had long been ignorantly seeking after. Which was the excellent advantage the Apostle made of the inscription on the altar at Athens to the unknown God; Whom, saith he, ye ignorantly serve, Acts xvii. him I declare unto you. And which was the happy use the primitive learned Christians made of all those passages concerning the Divine nature, and the immortality of the souls of men, which they found in the heathen writers, thereby to evidence to the world that the main postulata, or suppositions of Christian religion, were granted by their own most admired men ; and that Christianity did not rase out, but only build upon those common foundations, which were entertained by all who had any name for reason.

23.

IX.

Though this, I say, were the happy effect of this building errors on common truths to all that had the advantage of Divine revelation, to discern the one from the other; yet as to others who were destitute of it, they were liable to this twofold great inconvenience by it: First, for the sake of the apparent rottenness of (1) the superstructures, to question the soundness of the foundations on which they stood. And this, I doubt not, was the case of many considerative heathens, who observing that monstrous and unreasonable way of worship obtaining among the heathen, and not being able by the strength of their own reason, through the want of Divine revelation, to deduce any certain instituted worship, they were shrewdly tempted to renounce those principles, when they could not but abhor the