Popular errors, in generall poynts concerning the knowledge of religion having relation to their causes, and reduced into divers observations / by Jean D'Espaigne.

CHAPTER 1. What manner of knowledge or instruction is most naturall to the vulgar.

TWO men may know one and the same truth, but in divers manners. A Country man may know that an Eclypse ought to happen on such a day, having read it in an Almanack; but that is not called Science as an Astronomer who knows by demonstration foreseeing the Eclypse in his causes. He is not learned in religion who knows all the matters, but he that knows them in the manner, they ought to be known; on which many faults are to be observed.

There are two traditions or wayes of

instruction, on which the vulgar repose themselves. Sentences and generall propo∣sitions. 2 Histories, in these two consists almost all the knowledge of the common people. As for the first head the ignorant content themselves to know the generali∣ties, because the intelligence of particular points requires a sharper sight and a more fixed contemplation. Its easier to an Idiot to say These Things, then to restrain this generality to its species, to know how to give each one of them its proper name. To the other the instruction which is gi∣ven them by history pleaseth them be∣cause of its facility, for it consists in acti∣ons and circumstances perceptible to the imagination; so that all their knowledge lodgeth either in copious generalities or in the single individuums: but the points which are as it were mediums between these two wearies more the spirit obliging them to reason, and to take the measure, weight and number, and the names of all things. This is the cause the vulgar cast it off. In the mean time many are Ortho∣doxall

in the generality of a point, who erre grossely in the particulars thereof; witnesse the article of providence upon which the common people will give a cleare opinion in respect of the generality of this doctrine; but in the particular points imagine a world of absurdities.