§. 11.
2. But notwithstanding these: This seems also necessary to be granted on the other side (and is so by learned Protestants,) That in what kind of knowledge soever it be (whether of our Sense or Reason, in whatever Art or Science) one can never rightly assure himself concerning his own knowledge, that he is certain of any thing for a truth, which all, or most others of the same or better abilities for their cognoscitive faculties, in all the same external means, or grounds of the knowledge thereof, do pronounce an error. Not, as if truth were not so, though all the World oppose it; nor had certain grounds to be proved so, though all the World should deny them; but because the true knowledge of it, and them, cannot possibly appear to one mans intellect, and, omnibus paribus, not to others. Now for any disparity, as to defect, whether in the instrument, or in the means of knowledge, there, where all or most differ from me, it seems a strange pride not to imagine this defect in my self, rather than them; especially, * whenas, all the grounds of my Science are communicated to them; and * whenas, for my own mistakes, I cannot know exactly the extent of supernatural delusions. I say, be this in what knowledge we please; in that of sense, seeing, hearing, numbring, or in any of Mr. Chillingworth's former instances mentioned, §. 7. So, I can never rationally assure my self of what I see, when men, as well or better sighted, and all external circumstances for any thing I know being the same, see no such matter. And this is the Rule also proposed by learned Protestants to keep every Fanatick from pleading certainty in his own conceit. See Arch-Bishop Laud (§. 33. Consid. 5. n. 1.)——and Hooker (Preface §. 6.) their designing of a clear evidence, or demonstrative argument, viz. Such as proposed to any man, and understood, the mind cannot chuse but inwardly assent to it; and therefore, surely, proposed to many men, the mind of the most cannot dissent from it.