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 that have been either of late found out, or reviv'd. By this Equality of Respect to all Parties, it has allowed a sufficient Time to ripen whatever it debated: By this too it has made itself the common Cherisher and Umpire of them all; and has taken the right Way of finding out, what is good in any one of them. A Course, which if the Antients had more followed, their Sects would not so soon have destroy'd each other. It was a most perverse Custom amongst their Disciples, not to make any strict Choice, to leave some, and embrace others of their Masters Doctrines, but to swallow all at once. He that became a Stoick, an Epicurean, a Peripatetick, in Logick, or Moral Philosophy, or Physicks, never stuck presently to assent to whatever his Founder had said in all the other Sciences; tho' there was no Kind of Connexion between his Doctrines in the one, and the other. Thus was the whole Image of Philosophy formed in their Minds all together: and what they received so carelesly, they defended the same way; not in Parcels, but in Gross. Of this the Errors are apparent; for by so partially believing all sorts of Tenets, they had no Time to be fully convinc'd; and so became rather formal Asserters of them, than judicious. And by thus adhering to all, without making any Distinction between the Truths and Falshoods, Weaknesses and Strengths of their Sects; they denied to themselves a far more calm and safe Knowledge, which might have been compounded out of them all, by fetching something from one, and something from another.

This the Royal Society did well foresee; and therefore did not regard the Credit of Names, but Things: rejecting or approving nothing, because of the Title which it bears; preserving to itself the Liberty of Rh