PREFACE. 



and frequently accompanied by a presumptuous 

 confidence in private judgement : a dislike of all 

 established forms merely because they are established, 

 and of the old paths merely because they are old ; 

 Knowing that it has a tendency to go too far rather 

 than not far enough : Fearing the errors of good 

 intention and suspecting that there may be la 

 tent evil beneath apparent good, is always dis 

 posed to make a stand upon the old ways, and to look 

 with suspicion upon a love of change whether it ex 

 ists in itself or in others. Lord Bacon, zealous as he 

 was for all improvement ; believing, as he did, in the 

 omnipotence of knowledge, that the spirit of man is 

 as the lamp of God, wherewith he searcheth the in 

 wardness of all secrets ; and branding the idolaters of 

 old times as a scandal to the new says, It is good 

 not to try experiments in states, except the necessity 

 be urgent, or the utility evident : and well to beware 

 that it be the reformation that draweth on the 

 change, and not desire of change that pretendeth 

 the reformation : that novelty, though it be not re 

 jected, yet be always suspected : and, as the Scrip 

 ture saith, ( that we make a stand upon the ancient 

 way, and then look about us, and discover what 

 is the straight and right way, and so to walk 

 in it. (jO 



From the resistance by intelligence, from that 

 holy fear which suspects danger, and foresees the 

 possibility of mischief in approaching change, good 



(ij) See note I at the end, p. [xvi.] 



