dictate. These may be ranked under different heads of prejudice, but they are all of a kindred nature, and may be reduced to this one spring or head of authority.

I have treated of these particularly in Logic, Part II. Chapter III. Section 4; yet a few other remarks occurring among my papers, I thought it not improper to let them find a place here.

Cicero was well acquainted with the unhappy influences of authority, and complains of it in his first book De Naturâ Deorum: "In disputes and controversies (says "he) it is not so much the author or patrons of any "opinion, as the weight and force of argument, which "should influence the mind. The authority of those "who teach is a frequent hindrance to those who learn, "because they utterly neglect to exercise their own judgment, taking for granted whatsoever others whom they reverence have judged for them. I can by no means approve what we learn from the Pythagoreans, that "if any thing asserted in disputation was questioned, "they were wont to answer, Ipse dixit, that is, He him"self said so, meaning Pythagoras. So far did prejudice prevail, that authority without reason was sufficient to "determine disputes and to establish truth."

66

All human authority, though it be never so ancient, though it hath had universal sovereignty, and swayed all the learned and the vulgar world for some thousands of years, yet has no certain and undoubted claim to truth: nor is it any violation of good manners to enter a caveat with due decency against its pretended dominion. What is there, among all the sciences, that has been longer established, and more universally received, ever since the days of Aristotle, and perhaps for ages before he lived, than this, that all heavy bodies whatsoever tend toward the centre of the earth! But Sir Isaac Newton has found, that those bulky and weighty bodies, the earth and all the planets, tend toward the centre of the sun, whereby the authority of near three thousand years or more is not only called in question, but actually refuted and renounced.

Again: Was ever any thing more universally agreed

among the nation of the poets and critics, than that Homer and Virgil are inimitable writers of heroic poems? and whoever presumed to attack their writings, or their reputation, was either condemned for his malice or derided for his folly. These ancient authors have been supposed to derive peculiar advantages to aggrandize their verses from the heathen theology, and that variety of appearances in which they could represent their gods, and mingle them with the affairs of men. Yet within these few years Sir Richard Blackmore (whose prefaces are universally esteemed superior in their kind to any of his poems) has ventured to pronounce some noble truths in that excellent preface to his poem called Alfred, and has bravely demonstrated there, beyond all possible exception, that both Virgil and Homer are often guilty of very gross blunders, indecencies, and shameful improprieties; and that they were so far from deriving any advantage from the rabble of heathen gods, that their theology almost unavoidably exposed them to many of those blunders; and that it is not possible upon the foot of gentile superstition to write a perfect epic poem: whereas the sacred religion of the Bible would furnish a poem with much more just and glorious scenes, and a nobler machinery.

Mr. Dennis also had made it appear in his essays some years before, that there were no images so sublime in the brightest of the heathen writers, as those with which we are furnished in the poetic parts of the holy scripture ; and Rapin, the French critic, dared to profess the same sentiments, notwithstanding the world of poets and critics had so universally and unanimously exalted the heathen writers to the sovereignty for so many ages. If we would find out the truth in many cases, we must dare to deviate from the long-beaten track, and venture to think with a just and unbiassed liberty.

Though it be necessary to guard against the evil influences of authority, and the prejudices derived thence, because it has introduced thousands of errors and mischiefs into the world, yet there are three eminent and remarkable cases wherein authority, or the sentiments of

other persons, must or will determine the judgment and practice of mankind.

I. Parents are appointed to judge for their children in their younger years, and instruct them what they should believe, and what they should practise in civil and religious life. This is a dictate of nature, and doubtless it would have been so in a state of innocence. It is impossible that children should be capable of judging for themselves before their minds are furnished with a competent number of ideas, before they are acquainted with any principles and rules of just judgment, and before their reason is grown up to any degrees of maturity and proper exercises upon such subjects.

I will not say that a child ought to believe nonsense and impossibility because his father bids him; for so far as the impossibility appears he cannot believe it: nor will I say he ought to assent to all the false opinions of his parents, or to practise idolatry and murder, or mischief, at their command; yet a child knows not any better way to find out what he should believe, and what he should practise, before he can possibly judge for himself, than to run to his parents and receive their sentiments and their directions.

You will say this is hard indeed, that the child of a heathen idolater, or a cruel cannibal, is laid under a sort of necessity by nature of sinning against the light of nature; I grant it is hard indeed, but it is only owing to our original fall and apostasy: the law of nature continues as it was in innocence, namely, That a parent should judge for his child; but if the parent judges ill, the child is greatly exposed by it, through that universal disorder that is brought into the world by the sin of Adam, our common father; and from the equity and goodness of God we may reasonably infer, that the great Judge of all will do right: he will balance the ignorance and incapacity of the child with the criminal nature of the offence in those puerile instances, and will not punish beyond just demerit.

Besides, what could God, as a Creator, do better for children in their minority, than to commit them to the

care and instruction of parents? None are supposed to be so much concerned for the happiness of children as their parents are; therefore it is the safest step to happiness, according to the original law of creation, to follow their directions, their parents' reason acting for them before they had reason of their own in proper exercise; nor indeed is there any better general rule in our fallen state by which children are capable of being governed, though in many particular cases it may lead them far astray from virtue and happiness.

If children by Providence be cast under some happier instructions, contrary to their parents' erroneous opinions, I cannot say it is the duty of such children to follow error when they discern it to be error, because their father believes it; what I said before is to be interpreted only of those that are under the immediate care and education of their parents, and not yet arrived at years capable of examination. I know not how these can be freed from receiving the dictates of parental authority in their youngest years, except by immediate or divine inspiration.

It is hard to say at what exact time of life the child is exempted from the sovereignty of parental dictates. Perhaps it is much juster to suppose that this sovereignty diminishes by degrees, as the child grows in understanding and capacity, and is more and more capable of exerting his own intellectual powers, than to limit this matter by months and years.

When childhood and youth are so far expired that the reasoning faculties are grown up to any just measures of maturity, it is certain that persons ought to begin to inquire into the reasons of their own faith and practice in all the affairs of life and religion: but as reason does not arrive at this power and self-sufficiency in any single moment of time, so there is no single moment when a child should at once cast of all his former beliefs and practices; but by degrees, and in slow succession, he should examine them, as opportunity and advantage offer, and either confirm, or doubt of, or change them, according to the leading of conscience and reason with all its advantages of information.

When we are arrived at manly age, there is no person on earth, no set or society of men whatsoever, that have power and authority given them by God, the creator and governor of the world, absolutely to dictate to others their opinions or practices in moral and religious life. God has given every man reason to judge for himself, in higher or lower degrees. Where less is given, less will be required. But we are justly chargeable with criminal sloth and misimprovement of the talents with which our Creator has entrusted us, if we take all things for granted which others assert, and believe and practise all things which they dictate without due examination.

II. Another case wherein authority must govern our assent is in many matters of fact. Here we may and ought to be determined by the declarations or narratives of other men; though I confess this is usually called testimony rather than authority. It is upon this foot that every son or daughter among mankind are required to believe that such and such persons are their parents, for they can never be informed of it but by the dictates of others. It is by testimony that we are to believe the laws of our country, and to pay all proper deference to the prince, and to magistrates in subordinate degrees of authority, though we did not actually see them chosen, crowned, or invested with their title and character. It is by testimony that we are necessitated to believe there is such a city as Canterbury or York, though perhaps we have never been at either; that there are such persons as papists at Paris and Rome, and that there are many sottish and cruel tenets in their religion. It is by testimony that we believe that Christianity, and the books of the Bible, have been faithfully delivered down to us through many generations; that there was such a person as Christ our Saviour, that he wrought miracles and died on the cross, that he rose again and ascended to heaven.

The authority or testimony of men, if they are wise and honest, if they had full opportunities and capacities of knowing the truth, and are free from all suspicion of deceit in relating it, ought to sway our assent; especially when multitudes concur in the same testimony, and when there are many other attending circumstances which raise