[A] The "Miscellany Tracts" were put forth by "Tho. Tenison" (1636-1715), who afterwards became Archbishop of Canterbury, but was then the Rector of a London parish, St. Martin-in-the-Fields. He had been a Norwich school-boy, and subsequently minister of St. Peter's Mancroft. He was doubtless well acquainted with Browne and his family, and hence his reference in the preface quoted to "the _Lady_ and _Son_ of the excellent Authour," who, he says, "deliver'd" the papers to him. Browne wrote early in the second half of the seventeenth century, during a period of great awakening in the study of Nature. Hitherto it could hardly be said that a direct appeal to the works of Nature had been the prevailing method. Aristotle was still the established authority, and commentaries on his works occupied the minds of men to the exclusion of original investigation, notwithstanding that this great philosopher had himself, both by precept and example, urged the importance of direct observation and inquiry; the Mediæval school of thought still prevailed and cramped every effort at progress. How keenly Browne lamented this spirit of slavish adherence to tradition may be judged from a passage in one of his Essays in the "Vulgar Errors" condemning the obstinate adherence unto antiquity; he writes, "but the mortallist enemy unto knowledge, and that which hath done the greatest execution upon truth, hath been a peremptory adhesion unto authority; and more especially the establishing of our belief upon the dictates of antiquity. For (as every capacity may observe) most men of ages present, so supersticiously do look upon ages past, that the authorities of one exceed the reason of the other." In another place he argues that the present should be the age of authority, seeing that we possess all the wisdom of the ancients which has come down to us, with that of our own times added. In fact, Browne's motto appears to have been "prove all things and hold fast only to that which is good."[B]