’Tis a great mistake to fancy it a reproach to change our Sentiments, the infamy lies on their side who wilfully and unreasonably adhere to ’em. Not but that it is mean and shameful to be ever on the tip-toe, and indeed to change in any Case where pure and disinteress’d Reason does not oblige us to it. To be once willing to alter our sentiments if there be just occasion for’t, wou’d for ever after secure us from Changing, to which the Precipitate and Obstinate are most liable; whereas such as suspend their Judgments till after a sufficient Examination and Weighing of all things they see cause to fix them, do seldom Change, because they can hardly meet with any Reason to do so; and indeed whatever may be the Character of a Wit, Stay’dness and Deliberation is that of a Wise Person. But as there is an extream on one hand in being too resolutely bent on our Old Opinions, so is there on the other in inordinately thirsting after Novelty. An Opinion is neither better nor worse for being Old or New, the Truth of it is the only thing considerable; tho properly speaking all Truth is Antient, as being from Eternity in the Divine Ideas, ’tis only New in respect of our Discoveries. If we go about to assign a Reason for this insatiable desire of Novelty, I know not how to find a better than our Credulity and easy assent to things inevident. Truth being the proper Object of the Understanding it does naturally search after it, and tho this search will never wholly cease, because our Understandings are more capacious than our Discoveries, and the view of one Truth is but a Preparative to look farther; yet had we clear and certain Evidence for our Conclusions, tho that wou’d not end our Inquiries, it wou’d however satisfie us, so far at least as they had gone. Whereas on the contrary your hunters after Novelty are commonly never satisfied, they pull down to day what they had built up yesterday, and Why? But because they concluded too soon? and their Novel Hypothesis is founded on Fancy or Passion, or any thing rather than Right Reason.