veys our differences in religion with an equitable and fair indifference, and so finds, probably, that none of them are in everything unexceptionable. These divisions and systems were made by men, and carry the mark of fallible on them; and in those whom he differs from, and till he opened his eyes had a general prejudice against, he meets with more to be said for a great many things than before he was aware of, or could have imagined. Which of these two now is most likely to judge right in our religious controversies, and to be most stored with truth, the mark all pretend to aim at? All these men that I have instanced in,[1] thus unequally furnished with truth and advanced in knowledge, I suppose of equal natural parts; all the odds between them has been the different scope that has been given to their understandings to range in, for the gathering up of information and furnishing their heads with ideas and notions and observations, whereon to employ their mind and form their understandings.
It will possibly be objected, “who is sufficient for all this?” I answer, more than can be imagined. Everyone knows what his proper business is, and what, according to the character he makes of himself, the world may justly expect of him; and to answer that, he will find he will have time and opportunity enough to furnish himself, if he will not deprive himself by a narrowness of spirit of those helps that are at hand. I do not say, to be a good geographer, that a man should visit every mountain, river, promontory, and creek upon the face of the earth, view the build-
- ↑ Instanced in. Given in illustration.
