The Preface.

These three principles of knowledge must, by necessity, be combined. Otherwise, he who follows the guidance of his senses alone will never be any wiser than the common people. He would not be able to conceive of the Moon as being smaller than a star, or the Sun as larger than the Earth, or that the Earth is a sphere and habitable in every part.

1 On the contrary, if a man contemplates abstract things and consults only with reason without the evidence of his senses, he will be carried away by mere phantasms original: "phantaſmes"; delusions or products of the imagination that have no basis in reality. and will create a new world for himself—much like the Platonic and Aristotelian philosophers, and others.

Lastly, those who heed only the Scripture and listen to neither sense nor reason are either carried away beyond the world by the loftiness of their own ideas, or else they entangle things they do not understand with a "collier’s faith" original: "Colliers faith"; a term for blind, unthinking faith. It refers to a famous anecdote about a coal miner (collier) who, when asked what he believed, replied simply that he believed whatever the Church believed, without knowing what that was.. Alternatively, by following the literal word, they propose things for themselves to be believed that are utterly absurd and superstitious, such as the