A55307:44
The Samaritan showing that many and unnecessary impositions are not the oil that must…The Samaritan shewing that many and unnecessary impositions are not the oyl that must…
The Samaritan showing that many and unnecessary impositions are not the oil that must heal the church together with the way or means to do it / by a country gentleman who goes to common-prayer and not to meetings.The Samaritan shewing that many and unnecessary impositions are not the oyl that must heal the church together with the way or means to do it / by a country gentleman who goes to common-prayer and not to meetings.
London: printed for Tho. Simmons, 1682
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
That the gradual Difference of Mens Understandings, is very great, and almost infinite, cannot reasonably be denied. Parents, Teachers of Schools, Tutors, and all kind of Artificers, find it so in the Experience of every day. It hath been so in all Ages, and will be so for all that I can see, as long as the World endures. Whether there be an inequality among Souls; or whether this great variety proceeda from the differing mixtures of the Elements, that compound our Bodies, and out of which our Organs are made, I will not determine, though I incline to believe the former; for 'tis past my imagination to conceive how the various ⟨p. 19⟩mixtures of senseless Elements or Atoms, should produce all that variety that is observable in the Understandings of Men from the greatest Statesman, Philosopher, or Divine, to the meanest Peasant, or the most blockish Dolt.
That the gradual Difference of Mens Understandings, is very great, and almost infinite, cannot reasonably be denied. Parents, Teachers of Schools, Tutors, and all kind of Artificers, find it so in the Experience of every day. It hath been so in all Ages, and will be so for all that I can see, as long as the World endures. Whether there be an inequality among Souls; or whether this great variety proceeda from the differing mixtures of the Elements, that compound our Bodies, and out of which our Organs are made, I will not determine, though I incline to believe the former; for 'tis past my imagination to conceive how the various ⟨p. 19⟩mixtures of sensless Elements or Atoms, should produce all that variety that is observable in the Understandings of Men from the greatest Statesman, Philosopher, or Divine, to the meanest Peasant, or the most blockish Dolt.
Parents first find a vast difference in the capacities of their Children; some of them are of quick and pregnant Wit and Ingeny; they easily receive and apprehend whatever is proposed to them; others are dull and heavy, and receive with difficulty such things as are offered them for their Learning and Knowledge. Some of them are capable of understanding some things, whereas of other things they are as uncapable almost as the veriest Idiots. The Experience of Schoolmasters next, is much the same: Some of those Children that are committed to their care, do readily learn and receive whatever they reach and inform them: Others with difficulty and much labour. Some can never be brought to learn any thing that is regardable, by all the care and endeavours in the World. Tutors at the University find the like variety among their Pupils. Some Youths hear their Lectures, and understand and remember the Contents of them; and if they be examined concerning them, will give a good and fair account of them: But others hear them, but neither understand, nor remember almost any thing of them; and if the same things be repeated over again, with all the clearness that can be expressed by words, yet they still remain without Knowledge or Understanding