No man is so
wholly taken up with the attendance on the means of living, as to have
no spare time at all to think of his soul, and inform himself in
matters of religion. Were men as intent upon this as they are on
things of lower concernment, there are none so enslaved to the
necessities of life who might not find many vacancies that might be
husbanded to this advantage of their knowledge.
4. People hindered from inquiry. Besides those whose improvements
and informations are straitened by the narrowness of their fortunes,
there are others whose largeness of fortune would plentifully enough
supply books, and other requisites for clearing of doubts, and
discovering of truth: but they are cooped in close, by the laws of
their countries, and the strict guards of those whose interest it is
to keep them ignorant, lest, knowing more, they should believe the
less in them. These are as far, nay further, from the liberty and
opportunities of a fair inquiry, than these poor and wretched
labourers we before spoke of: and however they may seem high and
great, are confined to narrowness of thought, and enslaved in that
which should be the freest part of man, their understandings. This
is generally the case of all those who live in places where care is
taken to propagate truth without knowledge; where men are forced, at a
venture, to be of the religion of the country; and must therefore
swallow down opinions, as silly people do empiric's pills, without
knowing what they are made of, or how they will work, and having
nothing to do but believe that they will do the cure: but in this
are much more miserable than they, in that they are not at liberty
to refuse swallowing what perhaps they had rather let alone; or to
choose the physician, to whose conduct they would trust themselves.
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