Wisdom, Properly So Called, Is

If This Superstitious Fear Of Spirits Were Taken Away, And With It, Prognostiques From Dreams, False Prophecies, And Many Other Things Depending Thereon, By Which, Crafty Ambitious Persons Abuse The Simple People, Men Would Be Much More Fitted Then They Are For Civill Obedience.

And In These Four Things, Opinion Of Ghosts , Ignorance Of Second Causes, Devotion Towards What Men Fear , And Taking Of Things Casual For Prognostics , Consisteth The Natural Seed Of Religion ; Which By Reason Of The Different Fancies, Judgments And Passions Of Several Men, Has Grown Up Into Ceremonies So Different, That Those Which Are Used By One Man, Are For The Most Part Ridiculous To Another.

For It Is Not The Bare Words, But The Scope Of The Writer That Giveth True Light, By Which Any Writing Is To Bee Interpreted; And They That Insist Upon Single Texts, Without Considering The Main Designe, Can Derive No Thing From Them Clearly; But Rather By Casting Atomes Of Scripture, As Dust Before Mens Eyes, Make Everything More Obscure Than It Is; An Ordinary Artifice Of Those Who Seek Not The Truth, But Their Own Advantage.

To Be Seduced By Orators, As A Monarch By Flatterers.

Life In The State Of Nature Is Solitary, Poor, Nasty, Brutish, And Short.