406 GREAT INSTAU RATION. 



For our own part, from an earnest desire of truth, we have com 

 mitted ourselves to doubtful, difficult, and solitary ways ; and relying 

 on the Divine assistance, have supported our minds against the 

 vehemence of opinions, our own internal doubts and scruples, and the 

 darkness and fantastic images of the mind ; that at length we might 

 make more sure and certain discoveries for the benefit of posterity. 

 And if we shall have affected anything to the purpose, what led us to 

 it was a true and genuine humiliation of mind. Those who before us 

 applied themselves to the discovery of arts, having just glanced upon 

 things, examples, and experiments ; immediately, as if invention was 

 but a kind of contemplation, raised up their own spirits to deliver 

 oracles: whereas our method is continually to dwell among things 

 soberly, without abstracting or setting the understanding farther from 

 them than makes their images meet ; which leaves but little work for 

 genius and mental abilities. And the same humility that we practise 

 in learning, the same we also observe in teaching, without endeavouring 

 to stamp a dignity on any of our inventions, by the triumphs of con 

 futation, the citations of antiquity, the producing of authorities, or the 

 mask of obscurity ; as any one might do, who had rather give lustre 

 to his own name, than light to the minds of others. We oti er no 

 violence, and spread no nets for the judgments of men, but lead them 

 on to things themselves, and their relations ; that they may view their 

 own stores, what they have to reason about, and what they may add, 

 or procure, for the common good. And if at any time ourselves have 

 erred, mistook, or broke off too soon, yet as we only propose to exhibit 

 things naked, and open, as they are, our errors may be the readier 

 observed, and separated, before they considerably infect the mass of 

 knowledge; and our labours be the more easily continued. And thus 

 we hope to establish for ever a true and legitimate union between 

 the experimental and rational faculty, whose fallen and inauspicious 

 divorces and repudiations have disturbed everything in the family of 

 mankind. 



But as these great things are not at our disposal, we here, at the 

 entrance of our work, with the utmost humility and fervency, put forth 

 our prayers to Cod, that remembering the miseries of mankind, and 

 the pilgrimage of this life, where we pass but few days and sorrowful, 

 he would vouchsafe, through our hands, and the hands of others, to 

 whom he has given the like mind, to relieve the human race by a new 

 act of his bounty. We likewise humbly beseech him, that what is 

 human may not clash with what is divine : and that when the ways of 

 the senses are opened, and a greater natural light set up in the mind, 

 nothingof incredulity and blindness towards divinemysteries may arise ; 

 but rather that the understanding, now cleared up, and purged of all 

 vanity and superstition, may remain entirely subject to the divine 

 oracles, and yield to faith, the things that are faith s : and lastly, that 

 expelling the poisonous knowledge infused by the serpent, which puffs 

 up and swells the human mind, we may neither be wise above 

 measure, nor go beyond the bounds of sobriety, but pursue the truth 

 in charity. 



