The General Preface.

...with that confidence, I declared the solidity of the first argument. The more I considered it, the more firm I found it to be; nor have I to this day met with any man or book that could produce anything material toward the refutation original: "Confutation" of it.

His excuse for not adding a treatise on Superstition to that of Enthusiasm.

9. I cannot easily predict original: "presage" what defect anyone might find in my Treatise of Enthusiasm. Nor can I protect myself from appearing deficient to a reader who, considering the usefulness of that work, feels I have failed by not adding another treatise on Superstition. But I have naturally and unintentionally followed that judicious advice of the Poet:

For I must confess I do not look upon that subject as something I can refine, as it is an argument better suited for rhetoric than philosophy. Besides, I never found my mind low or abject enough to sink into any feeling or concept of that state, nor to experimentally discover what lies at the bottom of it. I must frankly confess that I have a natural touch of Enthusiasm in my temperament original: "Complexion", but it was one that—thank God—was always governable enough, and which I have eventually found to be perfectly controllable. By virtue of this victory, I know better what is inside Enthusiasts than they do themselves; therefore, I was able to write what I wrote with vitality and judgment, and I hope I shall contribute significantly to the peace and quiet of this kingdom because of it.

But having had such a notion of God from my very youth—one that represented Him to me as the most noble and excellent Being possible—it could never enter my mind that He was either easily provoked or easily appeased by the omission or performance of any lowly or insignificant services. Such services neither perfect human nature nor are they the genuine result of that perfection. Therefore, I had an early belief that he serves God best who is least envious, worldly, or sensual; who delights most in the common good of the Universe; and who has the strongest faith in the bounty and mercy of God—of which His Son Jesus is the most tangible pledge He could show to the world. This constant frame of spirit made me entirely incapable of even the slightest trace original: "Tincture" of Superstition. For it is the ignorance of better things that causes those anxieties and distresses of mind regarding matters of less importance.

The end of religion is human happiness and perfection; he who serves God while imagining Him to lack anything of his own, instead of honoring Him, actually insults Him. Therefore, superstition is always accompanied by ignorance or hypocrisy. The first occurs when people do not know what that "good and acceptable will of God" is—which is to become like Him ("You will honor God best if you make your mind like God," original: "Τιμήσεις τὸν Θεὸν ἄριστα ἐὰν τῷ Θεῷ τὴν διάνοιαν ὁμοιώσῃς" (Timēseis ton Theon arista ean tō Theō tēn dianoian homoiōsēs) as Pythagoras taught). Instead, they express their zeal and devotion in things that benefit neither themselves nor anyone else. The second occurs when these same trifles are offered up to God, not so much out of ignorance of what is better, but out of a kind of silent fraud and cunning deception of God—as if making an unequal exchange with Him, or rather, forcing it upon Him. Although they may pacify their false hearts and consciences for a while with these delusions, in the meantime, they really only provoke God with these "sacrifices of fools" A reference to Ecclesiastes 5:1..

This is the sum of what I am able to conceive regarding this other disease of