第11章 Letter IV(1)

Sir,There is a passage in Tully so extremely applicable to the mischievous,but transitory,prevalence of those principles of government,which King James the First imported into this country,that since it occurs to my memory,I cannot begin this letter better than by quoting it to you,and making a short commentary on it.Opinionum commenta delet dies,naturae judicia confirmat.Groundless opinions are destroyed,but rational judgments,or the judgments of nature,are confirmed by time.It is Balbus,who makes this observation very properly,when he is about to prove the existence of a supreme being.The same observation might have been employed as properly,on other occasions,against Balbus himself;and the truth of it might have been exemplified,by comparing the paradoxes and superstitious opinions of his own sect,as well as the tales of an hippocentaur,or a chimera,with the eternal truths of genuine theism,and sound philosophy.In short,the application of it might have been justly made then,and may be so now in numberless instances,taken from the most important subjects,on which the thoughts of men are exercised,or in which their interests,as men and members of society,are concerned.

The authority of a sect,and much more of a state,is able to inspire,and habit to confirm,the most absurd opinions.Passion,or interest,can create zeal.But nothing can give stability and durable uniformity to error.

Indolence,or ignorance,may keep it floating,as it were,on the surface of the mind,and sometimes hinder truth from penetrating;or force may maintain it in profession,when the mind assents to it no longer.But such opinions,like human bodies,tend to their dissolution from their birth.They will be soon rejected in theory,where men can think,and in practice,where men can act with freedom.They maintain themselves no longer,than the same means of seduction,which first introduced them,or the same circumstances,which first imposed them,attend and continue to support them.Men are dragged into them,and held down in them,by chains of circumstances.Break but these chains,and the mind returns with a kind of intellectual elasticity to its proper object,truth.This natural motion is so strong,that examples might be cited of men embracing truth in practice,before they were convinced of it in theory.There are cases,where reason,freed from constraint,or roused by necessity,acts in some sort the part of instinct.We are impelled by one,before we have time to form an opinion.We are often determined by the other,against our opinion;that is,before we can be said properly to have changed it.But observe here the perverseness of that rational creature,man.When this happens;when the judgment of nature,for so we may speak after Tully,hath prevailed against the habitual prejudice of opinion;instead of acknowledging the victorious truth,which determined him to act,instead of condemning the erroneous opinion,against which he acted,he is too often apt to endeavour,peevishly and pedantically,to reconcile his actions to his error;nay,to persist in renouncing true,and asserting false maxims,whilst he reaps the benefit,and maintains the consequences of the former.

You see whither we are brought by these general reflections.The absurd opinions (fictae et vanae our Roman orator would have called them)about the right,power,and prerogative of kings,were so little able to take a deep root,and to stand the blasts of opposition,that few of those who drew their swords on the side of King Charles the First,were determined to it by them.I assert this fact on contemporary authority;on the authority even of some who were themselves engaged in that cause,from the beginning to the end of our civil wars.A more recent tradition assures us,that when the same opinions revived at the Restoration,they did not sink deep even then into the minds of men;but floated so superficially there,that the Parliament (the very parliament,who had authorized them,and imposed them,as I observed in the last letter)proceeded a great way,and was ready to have proceeded farther,in direct opposition to them.A tradition still more recent will inform us,and that is to be the subject of this letter;that when these opinions revived again,at the latter end of the same reign,with an appearance of greater strength,and of a more national concurrence than ever,they revived but to be exploded more effectually than ever.King Charles made use of them to check the ferment raised against his government;but did not seem to expect that they would subsist long in force.His wiser brother depended much on them;but his dependence was vain.They were,at that time,wearing out apace;and they wore out the faster by the extravagant use which was made of them.They were in the mouths of many,but in the hearts of few;for almost all those who had them in their mouths,acted against them.Thus were these wicked and ridiculous principles of government twice revived,and twice destroyed again,in less than thirty years from the Restoration.