There is nothing more ordinary than
children's receiving into their minds propositions (especially about
matters of religion) from their parents, nurses, or those about
them: which being insinuated into their unwary as well as unbiassed
understandings, and fastened by degrees, are at last (equally
whether true or false) riveted there by long custom and education,
beyond all possibility of being pulled out again. For men, when they
are grown up, reflecting upon their opinions, and finding those of
this sort to be as ancient in their minds as their very memories,
not having observed their early insinuation, nor by what means they
got them, they are apt to reverence them as sacred things, and not
to suffer them to be profaned, touched, or questioned: they look on
them as the Urim and Thummim set up in their minds immediately by
God himself, to be the great and unerring deciders of truth and
falsehood, and the judges to which they are to appeal in all manner of
controversies.
10. Of irresistible efficacy. This opinion of his principles (let
them be what they will) being once established in any one's mind, it
is easy to be imagined what reception any proposition shall find,
how clearly soever proved, that shall invalidate their authority, or
at all thwart these internal oracles; whereas the grossest absurdities
and improbabilities, being but agreeable to such principles, go down
glibly, and are easily digested.
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