Of the nearer and more Immediate Causes of popular Errors, both in the wiser and common sort, Misapprehension, Fallacy, or false Deduction, Credulity, Supinity, Adherence unto Antiquity, Tradition and Authority. [Sidenote: _The belief of_ Centaures _whence occasioned._] The first is a mistake, or a misconception of things, either in their first apprehensions, or secondary relations. So _Eve_ mistook the Commandment, either from the immediate injunction of God, or from the secondary narration of her Husband. So might the Disciples mistake our Saviour, in his answer unto _Peter_ concerning the death of _John_, as is delivered, _John_ 21. Peter _seeing_ John, _said unto_ Jesus, _Lord, and what shall this man do?_ Jesus _saith, If I will, that he tarry till I come, what is that unto thee? Then went this saying abroad among the brethren, that that Disciple should not die._ Thus began the conceit and opinion of the _Centaures_: that is, in the mistake of the first beholders, as is declared by _Servius_; when some young _Thessalians_ on horseback were beheld afar off, while their horses watered, that is, while their heads were depressed, they were conceived by the first Spectators, to be but one animal; and answerable hereunto have their pictures been drawn ever since. [Sidenote: _Equivocation and Amphibologie, how they differ._] [Sidenote: Pythagoras, _his Allegorical precepts moralized._] And, as simple mistakes commonly beget fallacies, so men rest not in false apprehensions, without absurd and inconsequent deductions; from fallacious foundations, and misapprehended _mediums_, erecting conclusions no way inferrible from their premises. Now the fallacies whereby men deceive others, and are deceived themselves, the Ancients have divided into Verbal and Real. Of the Verbal, and such as conclude from mistakes of the Word, although there be no less than six, yet are there but two thereof worthy our notation, and unto which the rest may be referred; that is the fallacy of Equivocation and Amphibology which conclude from the ambiguity of some one word, or the ambiguous Syntaxis of many put together. From this fallacy arose that calamitous Error of the Jews, misapprehending the Prophesies of their _Messias_, and expounding them alwayes unto literal and temporal expectations. By this way many Errors crept in and perverted the Doctrine of _Pythagoras_, whilst men received his Precepts in a different sense from his intention; converting Metaphors into proprieties, and receiving as literal expressions, obscure and involved truths. Thus when he enjoyned his Disciples, an abstinence from Beans, many conceived they were with severity debarred the use of that pulse; which notwithstanding could not be his meaning; for as _Aristoxenus_, who wrote his life averreth, he delighted much in that kind of food himself. But herein, as _Plutarch_ observeth, he had no other intention than to dissuade men from