pride and self-conceit, and affectations of fingularity, and enjoin us to lay afide malice and envy, and to see that no undue prejudice or partiality mix themselves in our fearches of truth. He that allows us to reafon freely, may certainly command us to reafon juftly and attend to proper and competent arguments to prove any truth which he requires us to know, and to be moved by rational inducements to believe. And in what way foever he condescends to teach us, we ought to be ready to be informed. Now thefe authors grant that to be informed confifts in being made to think justly and truly of things; and to be obliged to this in the application of our reafon, is no more contrary to the free use of our understanding, than obliging us to the practice of virtue and morality is to the freedom of our wills. To think freely in the finding out any truth requires, not that we fhould think or judge of it just what we please, but that we should confider impartially the nature of the evidence for and against it; and when we have all the light we can procure, then to be determined by fuperior evidence. But to contradict a truth, without enquiring

into it, only because it is vulgarly received, when to a confidering man there is good evidence for it, is not free-thinking but bondage of thought. For a man's reasoning may be as much bound and his thinking as much biaffed by taking a prejudice against any thing, as for it; and he thinks just as freely, that takes all current opinions for true, as he that takes them all for false; that is indeed neither the one nor the other. In truths which are capable of fufficient proof, either Moral or Mathematical, he ought not to be accounted a Free-thinker who at the first appearance boldly denies them before he has confidered the evidence. For inftance, Suppose any man not entered in Mathematicks, upon viewing a great variety of Triangles and other figures, fhould take a fancy to deny that the three angles of any triangle are equal to two right angles, or to the three angles of any other triangle, because he will not give himself the trouble of confidering the demonstration, such a practice would hardly be called freedom of reafoning, but want of it. When Mr. Hobbes,* who is alledged for an inftance of Free-thinking, pretended with great confidence to have demonftrated the quadrature of a circle, those who had

16. p.170.

had thought more freely and, were better able to judge of the matter, thought that his faftus and felf-conceit had hindred his thinking from being so free and impartial in the cafe as it ought to have been, though he thought fit to write Contra faftum profefforum Geometria. He whose thoughts are justest, and most according to the nature of things, is the trueft Free-thinker, and it is not the open profeffion of every wild and incoherent fancy which comes into a man's head, that is fit to denominate him fuch. For Thinking, even according to their own definition, implies Reasoning, but the affirming any propofition without just ground or the denying any propofition at a venture without examining, or the refufing fuch affent as the nature of the evidence requires, is not Reasoning, and therefore not Thinking, much less free-thinking according to the definition. For, according to these authors, f What is a restraint of free-thinking on any fubject, but fomewhat which binders me from thinking on that fubject? 'Tis no matter therefore whether the hindrance be from without or from within, provided I am · hindred. But I believe the greatest and most infuperable hindrances to freedom of thinking

and reasoning, are fuch as men put themselves under, by indulging their pride or their paffions, their pleasure or their floth. Free-thinking (as these Authors allow 8) requires great diligence and application of mind; and he that applies himself to it, must, by that habit, expel all thofe vicious difpofitions and paffions, by which every man out of action is toffed and governed; therefore they that will not be at the pains first to free themselves from all thofe vicious difpofitions, which hinder them from being impartial and fincere in their searches of truth, do in vain arrogate to themselves the fpecious title of Free-thinkers; which indeed would be a Title of honour, if it were applied to none but those who truly deserve it, by a free and ingenuous use of their reafon in the finding out of truth, and honestly submitting to it when found. But when it is applied to those who have no other pretence to it, except the affuming a liberty of denying the plainest truths, and reducing all reason to downright scepticism; we cannot but then think the name has loft much of its reputation by being fo misapplied.

True liberty of action does not confift in

doing.

& Pag. 121.

doing what we please without any controul, but in being free from all outward force, to govern our felves by the law of reason; and he is no more free that is the flave of his own paffions, than he that is under fubjection to the mere will of another man. So freedom of thinking does not confist in an ability to diffent from the principles of reason, but in being fuperior to all those prejudices, either from our felves or others, which hinder us from affenting them. If therefore God hath given us fuch a liberty, he may, with the highest reafon, make us responsible to himself for the use of it: and to suppose that we are so responsible is not to deny this freedom, but to affert it; because if we had it not we could not be answerable for the abuse of it. Now upon this foundation, we are not only allowed, but obliged, to enquire into the grounds of Religion, and bring them to a fair and impartial examination: and the reason why God Almighty may juftly condemn us for our infidelity is, because, if we use this freedom honeftly, we cannot fail of feeing fufficient reafon to convince us. Whatever evil confequences therefore are threatned to thofe that will not believe, they are not defigned to hinder our freedom of enquiry into the grounds of