PROLEGOMENA. ~ xlv. 



piety, which we admit may be understood and 

 perhaps best practised by the most iiumble peasant ? 

 I answer readily, that it is better for those not 

 already corrupted by false reasoning-, to abstain 

 from such investigations. To a child beginning 

 life, the most lowly and unlettered of the Saints 

 would be the better models of the following of 

 Christ, than the most exalted and learned. St. 

 Veronica had as much merit as St. Paula ; and 

 the humility of St. Francis of Assisiura is more 

 perfect than the erudition of St. Augustin. But 

 it is where we have already been led astray by 

 the delusions of abstruse philosophy that the 

 subtilties of argument are allowable, in order to 

 detect the illusion, and show the deceitfulness 

 and vanity of our own reasonings, by making 

 our metaphysical arguments recoil on ourselves, 

 to our discomfiture and mortification ; and thus 

 convince us that we must unlearn what we have 

 learned in our own conceits, and consent to 

 be taught all over again from authority like a 

 child. Again, if these enquiries are prompted by 

 the pride of scholarship, a culpable curiosity, or 

 a secret attachment to the beauties of argument, 

 they are condemnable ; for in such case they are 

 a dereliction of God for the love of ourselves. 

 But when undertaken to humiliate ourselves and 

 debase the pride of private judgments; particularly 

 when the instruction of others is included, they 



d2 



