That in deciding and determining of the truth of knowledge, men have
put themselves upon trials not competent. That antiquity and
authority; common and confessed notions; the natural and yielding
consent of the mind; the harmony and coherence of a knowledge in
itself; the establishing of principles with the touch and reduction
of other propositions unto them; inductions without instances
contradictory; and the report of the senses; are none of them
absolute and infallible evidence of truth, and bring no security
sufficient for effects and operations. That the discovery of new
works and active directions not known before, is the only trial to be
accepted of; and yet not that neither, in ease where one particular
giveth light to another; but where particulars induce an axiom or
observation, which axiom found out discovereth and designeth new
particulars. That the nature of this trial is not only upon the
point, whether the knowledge be profitable or no, but even upon the
point whether the knowledge be true or no; not because you may always
conclude that the Axiom which discovereth new instances is true, but
contrariwise you may safely conclude that if it discover not any new
instance it is in vain and untrue. That by new instances are not
always to be understood new recipes but new assignations, and of the
diversity between these two. That the subtilty of words, arguments,
notions, yea of the senses themselves, is but rude and gross in
comparison of the subtilty of things; and of the slothful and
flattering opinions of those which pretend to honour the mind of man
in withdrawing and abstracting it from particulars, and of the
inducements and motives whereupon such opinions have been conceived
and received.