The next Consideration I shall propose, is, That a thing may, if singly or precisely consider’d, appear Unreasonable, which yet may be very Credible, if consider’d as a Part of, or a manifest Consequence from, a Doctrine that is highly so.
Of this I could give you more Instances in several Arts and Sciences, than I think fit to be here specifi’d; and therefore I shall content my self to mention three or four.
When Astronomers tell us that the Sun, which seems not to us a foot broad, nor considerably bigger than the Moon, is above a hundred and threescore times bigger than the whole Globe of the Earth, which yet is forty times greater than the Moon; the thing thus nakedly propos’d, seems very Incredible. But yet, because Astronomers very skilful in their Art, have, by finding the Semidiameter of the Earth, and observing the Parallaxes of the Planets, concluded the proportion of these three Bodies to be such as has been mention’d, or thereabout, ev’n Learn’d and Judicious Men of all sorts, (Philosophers, Divines, and others,) think it not Credulity to admit what they affirm.
So the relations of Earthquakes that have reach’d divers hundreds of miles; of Eruptions of fire, that have at once overflown and burn’d vast Scopes of Land; of the blowing up of Mountains by their own fires; of the Casting up of new Islands in the Sea it self, and other Prodigies of too unquestionable. Truth; (for I know what work Ignorance and Superstition have made about other Prodigies:) If they were attested but by slight and ordinary Witness, they would be judg’d Incredible, but we scruple not to believe them, when the Relations are attested with such Circumstances, as make the Testimony as strong as the things attested are strange.
If ever you have consider’d, what Clavius, and divers other Geometricians teach upon the sixteenth Proposition of the third Book of Euclide, (which contains a Theorem about the Tangent and the Circumference of a Circle,) you cannot but have taken notice, that there are scarce greater Paradoxes deliver’d by Philosophers or Divines, than you will find asserted by Geometricians themselves. And though of late the Learned Jesuit Tacquet, and some rigid Mathematicians, have question’d divers of those things, yet ev’n what some of these severe Examiners confess to be Geometrically demonstrable from that Proposition, contains things so strange, that Philosophers themselves, that are not well acquainted with that Proposition and its Corollaries, can scarce look upon them as other than Incomprehensible, or at least Incredible, things; which yet, as improbable as they are consider’d in themselves, ev’n rigid Demonstrators refuse not to admit, because they are legitimately deducible from an Acknowledg’d truth.
And so also among the Magnetical Phaenomena there are divers things, which being nakedly propos’d must seem altogether unfit to be believ’d, as indeed having nothing like them in all nature; whereas those that are vers’d in Magnetick Philosophy, ev’n before they have made particular Trials of them, will look upon them as credible, because, how great Paradoxes soever they may seem to others, they are consonant and consequent to the Doctrine of Magnetism, whose grand Axioms (from what cause soever Magnetisms are to be deriv’d) are sufficiently manifest; and therefore a Magnetical Philosopher would not, though an ordinary Philosopher would, think it unreasonable to believe, that one part of the same Loadstone should draw a Needle to it, and the other part drive the same Needle from it; and that the Needle in a Seamans Compass, after having been carry’d perhaps many hunder’d Leagues (through differing Climates, and in stormy weather) without varying its Declination, may upon a sudden, without any manifest cause, point at some part of the Horizons several whole degrees distant from that which it pointed to before. To which might here be added divers other scarce credible things, which either others or I have try’d about Magnetical Bodies; but I shall hereafter have occasion to take notice of some of them in a fitter place.
Wherefore, when something deliver’d in or clearly deduc’d from Scripture is objected against, as a thing which it is not reasonable to believe, we must not only consider, whether, if it were not deliver’d in that Book, we should upon its own single Account think it fit or unworthy to be believ’d; but whether or no it is so improbable, that ‘tis more fit to be believ’d, that all the proofs that can be brought for the Authority of the Scripture are to be Rejected, than that this thing which comes manifestly recommended to our belief by that Authority, is worthy to be Admitted: I say, manifestly recommended by that Authority, because that, if the thing be not clearly deliver’d in Scripture, or be not clearly and cogently deduc’d thence, so far as that clearness is wanting, so far the thing it self wants of the full Authority of the Scripture, to impose it on our assent.