PROLEGOMENA. Ivii. 



all other mysteries, depends for proof on authority, 

 and not on reason. If we reject the sum of all 

 human authority, and believe only what we 

 understand, we shall soon become ideots. Let 

 us jud^e between the two principles, on which 

 people found their faith, by their respective 

 extremes, and see which we shall prefer leaning 

 towards. The extreme of authority, or the 

 believing as every one believes, is absolute truth, 

 as 1 have shown to be exemplified in what are 

 called axioms. But the extreme of private 

 judgment is ideocy, or the believing as nobody 

 else does, exemplified in the delusions of insanity. 

 Moreover we should not perplex ourselves with 

 questions as to why things are ordered as they 

 are, as some foolish philosophers do. For here 

 again we are soon bewildered, since one subtil 

 question may arise, which, including the petitions 

 of all the rest, seems to be a comprehensive way 

 of putting all their absurdities into one, namely, 

 why, since we in our private judgment can 

 conceive universal Nonentity to be possible, 

 should there ever have existed Anything ? 



I only bring forward these absurdities to 

 show the poverty of human reason. It has 

 pleased the eternal and uncreated God to create 

 things as they are, and in all their existing re- 

 lations ; and as We know absolutely nothing of 

 external and continuously existing objects, nor 



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