The Works of Sir Thomas Browne, Volume 1Browne, Thomas, Sir
Religion
The Works of Sir Thomas Browne, Volume 1
Browne, Thomas, Sir
Christianity; Ethics; Religion and medicine
And as Credulity is the cause of Error, so Incredulity oftentimes of not
enjoying truth; and that not only an obstinate incredulity, whereby we
will not acknowledge assent unto what is reasonably inferred, but any
Academical reservation in matters of easie truth, or rather sceptical
infidelity against the evidence of reason and sense. For these are
conceptions befalling wise men, as absurd as the apprehensions of fools,
and the credulity of the people which promiscuously swallow any thing.
For this is not only derogatory unto the wisdom of God, who hath
proposed the World unto our knowledge, and thereby the notion of
Himself; but also detractory unto the intellect, and sense of man
expressly disposed for that inquisition. And therefore, _hoc tantum
scio, quod nihil scio_, is not to be received in an absolute sense, but
is comparatively expressed unto the number of things whereof our
knowledge is ignorant. Nor will it acquit the insatisfaction of those
which quarrel with all things, or dispute of matters, concerning whose
verities we have conviction from reason, or decision from the inerrable
and requisite conditions of sense. And therefore if any affirm, the
earth doth move, and will not believe with us, it standeth still;
because he hath probable reasons for it, and I no infallible sense, nor
reason against it, I will not quarrel with his assertion. But if, like
_Zeno_, he shall walk about, and yet deny there is any motion in Nature,
surely that man was constituted for _Anticera_, and were a fit companion
for those, who having a conceit they are dead, cannot be convicted into
the society of the living.
The fourth is a Supinity, or neglect of Enquiry, even of matters whereof
we doubt; rather believing, than going to see; or doubting with ease and
_gratis_, than believing with difficulty or purchase. Whereby, either
from a temperamental inactivity, we are unready to put in execution the
suggestions or dictates of reason; or by a content and acquiescence in
every species of truth, we embrace the shadow thereof, or so much as may
palliate its just and substantial acquirements. Had our fore-Fathers sat
down in these resolutions, or had their curiosities been sedentary, who
pursued the knowledge of things through all the corners of nature, the
face of truth had been obscure unto us, whose lustre in some part their
industries have revealed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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