The vanity of dogmatizing: or confidence in opinions

The Preface.

night. Thus when some days,
and nights have gone over us,
the stroke of Fate concludes the
number of our pulses; we take
our leave of the Sun and Moon,
and bid mortality adieu. The
vital flame is extinct, the Soul
retires into another world, and
the body to dwell with dust. Nor
doth the last Scene yield us any
more satisfaction in our anatomy meaning here the analytical examination of our nature;
for we are as ignorant how
the soul leaves the light, as how
it first came into it; we know as
little how the union is dissolved,
that is, the chain of the so differ-
ing subsistencies the differing substances of body and spirit, that compound
us, as how it first commenced.
This then is the creature that so
pretends to knowledge, and that
makes such a noise, and bustle for

Opinions. The instruction of Del-
phos referring to the Oracle at Delphi may shame such confidents
into modesty; and till we have
learned that honest adviso advice or warning, though
from hell an allusion to the pagan origin of the oracle, Gnothi Seauton Know Thyself original Greek: ΓΝΩΘΙ ΣΕΑΥΤΟΝ; Confidence
is arrogance, and Dogmatizing the act of asserting opinions as if they were undeniable truths un-
reasonable presuming. I doubt not
but the opinionative resolver thinks
all these easy Knowables, and the
Theories here accounted Mysteries,
are to him Revelations. But let
him suspend that conclusion till
he hath weighed the considerations
hereof, which the Discourse itself
will present him with; and if he
can untie those knots, he is able
to teach all humanity, and will
do well to oblige mankind by his
informations.
I had thought here to have shut
up my Preface, being sensible of the