1. Mankind will be born in a state of infancy and nescience, that is, without actual knowledge.
2. Yea, with a nature that hath the innate dispositions to sloth, and to diverting pleasures and business; and more than so, to an averseness from those principles which are needful to sanctification and heavenly wisdom. The carnal mind will have an enmity against God, and will not mind the things of the Spirit, nor be subject to God's law, Rom. viii. 5-8.
3. Sound learning, or wisdom, in things of so high a nature as are the matters of salvation, will not be attained without hard study, earnest prayer, and humble submission to instructions; and all this a long time patiently endured, or rather willingly and delightfully performed.
4. And if the seeds of wisdom be not born with us, in a capacious disposition of understanding; but contrarily a natural unapprehensiveness blocks up the way; even time and labour will never (without a miracle) bring any to any great eminency of understanding.
5. And they that have both capacity, and an industrious disposition, must have also sound, and able, and diligent teachers; or at least escape the hands of seducers, and of partial, factious guides.
6. There are few born with good natural capacities, much less with a special dispositive acuteness; and few that will be at the pains and patience, which the getting of wisdom doth require; and few that will have the happiness of sound and diligent teachers; but fewest of all that will have a concurrence of all these three.
7. Therefore there will be but few very wise men in the world; ignorance will he common, wisdom will be rare.
8. Therefore error or false opinions will be common. For unless men never think of the things of which they are ignorant, or judge nothing of them one way or other, they are sure to err, so far as they judge in ignorance. But when things of greatest moment are represented as true or false, to be believed or rejected, the most ignorant mind is naturally inclined to pass its judgment or opinion of them one way or other; and to apprehend them according to the light he standeth in, and to think of them as he is disposed. So that ignorance and error will concur.
9. He that erreth, doth think that he is in the right, and erreth not: for to err, and to know that he erreth in judgment, is a contradiction, and impossible. (However in words and deeds a man may err, and know that he erreth.)
10. He that knoweth not, and that erreth, perceiveth not that evidence of truth which should make him receive it, and which maketh other men receive it; and therefore knoweth not that indeed another is in the right, or seeth any more than he.
11. Especially when every man is a stranger to another's mind and soul, as to any immediate inspection; and therefore knoweth not another's knowledge, nor the convincing reasons of his judgment.
12. As no man is moved against his own errors, by the reasons which he knoweth not; so pride, self-love, and partiality thence arising, incline all men naturally to be overvaluers of their own understandings, and so over-confident of all their own conceptions, and over-stiff in defending all their errors. As pride and selfishness are the firstborn of Satan, and the root of all positive evil in man's soul; so a man is more naturally proud of that which is the honour of a man, which is his understanding and goodness, than of that which is common to a beast, as strength, beauty, ornaments, &c. Therefore pride of understanding and goodness oft live, when sordid apparel telleth you that childish pride of ornaments is dead. And this pride maketh it very difficult, to the most ignorant and erroneous, to know their ignorance and error, or so much as to suspect their own understandings.
13. He that seeth but few things, seeth not much to make him doubt, and seeth not the difficulties which should check his confidence and stiffness in his way.
14. He that seeth many things, and that clearly knoweth much; especially, if he see them in their order, and respects to one another, and leaveth out no one substantial part which is needful to open the signification of the rest.
15. He that seeth many things disorderly and confusedly, and not in due method, and leaveth out some substantial parts, and hath not a digested knowledge, doth know much, and err much, and may make a bustle in the world of ignorants, as if he were an excellent, learned man; but hath little of the inward delight, or of the power and benefits of knowledge.
16. He that seeth many things but darkly, confusedly, and not in the true place and method, cannot reconcile truths among themselves; but is like a boy with a pair of tarrying irons, or like one that hath his clock or watch all in pieces, and knoweth not how to set them together. And therefore is inclined to be a sceptic.