That there is a city of Rome, that Pius Quintus and Gregory the Thirteenth, and others, have been Popes of Rome, I suppose we are certainly enough persuaded. The ground of our persuasion, who never saw the place nor persons before named, can be nothing but man's testimony. Will any man here notwithstanding allege those mentioned human infirmities as reasons why these things should be mistrusted or doubted of? Yea, that which is more, utterly to infringe the force and strength of man's testimony, were to shake the very fortress of God's truth. In a note on a passage in Skelton's 'Deism Revealed', [11] I have detected the subtle sophism that lurks in this argument, as applied by later divines in vindication of proof by testimony, in relation to the miracles of the Old and New Testament. As thus applied, it is a [Greek: metábasis eis allo génos], though so unobvious, that a very acute and candid reasoner might use the argument without suspecting the paralogism. It is not testimony, as testimony, that necessitates us to conclude that there is such a city as Rome--but a reasoning, that forms a branch of mathematical science. So far is our conviction from being grounded on our confidence in human testimony that it proceeds on our knowledge of its fallible character, and therefore can find no sufficient reason for its coincidence on so vast a scale, but in the real existence of the object. That a thousand lies told by as many several and unconnected individuals should all be one and the same, is a possibility expressible only by a fraction that is already, to all intents and purposes, equal to nought. B. iii. c. iii. 1. p. 447. The mixture of those things by speech, which by nature are divided, is the mother of all error. 'The division in thought of those things which in nature are distinct, yet one, that is, distinguished without breach of unity, is the mother,'--so I should have framed the position. Will, reason, life,--ideas in relation to the mind, are instances; 'entiæ indivise interdistinctæ'; and the main arguments of the atheists, materialists, deniers of our Lord's divinity and the like, all rest on the asserting of division as a necessary consequence of distinction. B. v. c. xix. 3. vol. ii. p. 87. Of both translations the better I willingly acknowledge that which cometh nearer to the very letter of the original verity; yet so that the other may likewise safely enough be read, without any peril at all of gainsaying as much as the least jot or syllable of God's most sacred and precious truth.