Page:History of the Royal Society.djvu/387

 Signs and Wonders, as if the Works of our Saviour and his Apostles had not been sufficient: Who ought to be esteem'd the most carnally minded, the Enthusiast, that pollutes his Religion with his own Passions, or the Experimenter, that will not use it to flatter and obey his own Desires, but to subdue them? Who is to be thought the greatest Enemy of the Gospel, he that loads Mens Faiths by so many improbable Things, as will go near to make the Reality itself suspected, or he that only admits a few Arguments, to confirm the Evangelical Doctrines, but then chuses those that are unquestionable? It cannot be an ungodly purpose to strive to abolish all Holy Cheats, which are of fatal Consequence, both to the Deceivers, and those that are deceiv'd: To the Deceivers, because they must needs be Hypocrites, having the Artifice in their keeping: To the Deceiv'd, because if their Eyes shall be ever open'd, and they chance to find, that they have been deluded in any one thing, they will be apt not only to reject that, but even to despise the very Truths themselves, which they had before been taught by those Deluders.

It were indeed to be confess'd, that this Severity of Censure on Religious Things, were to be condemn'd in Experimenters, if while they deny any Wonders that are falsely attributed to the True God, they should approve those of Idols or false Deities. But that is not objected against them. They make no Comparison between his Power, and the Works of any others, but only between the several ways of his own manifesting himself. Thus if they lessen one Heap, yet still they increase the other: In the main they diminish nothing of his Right. If they take from the Prodigies, they add to the ordinary Works of the Rh