stament, and to
adduce many confirmatory instances; but I pass on the more willingly, as
I am anxious to proceed to my next proposition. I will now, therefore,
pass on to what I proposed to treat of in the second part of this
chapter, namely, what persons are bound to believe in the narratives
contained in Scripture, and how far they are so bound. Examining this
question by the aid of natural reason, I will proceed as follows:

If any one wishes to persuade his fellows for or against anything which
is not self-evident, he must deduce his contention from their
admissions, and convince them either by experience or by ratiocination;
either by appealing to facts of natural experience, or to self-evident
intellectual axioms. Now unless the experience be of such a kind as to
be clearly and distinctly understood, though it may convince a man, it
will not have the same effect on his mind and disperse the clouds of his
doubt so completely as when the doctrine taught is deduced entirely from
intellectual axioms--that is, by the mere power of the understanding and
logical order, and this is especially the case in spiritual matters
which have nothing to do with the senses.

But the deduction of conclusions from general truths _a priori_, usually
requires a long chain of arguments, and, moreover, very great caution,
acuteness, and self-restraint--qualities which are not often met with;
therefore people prefer to be taught by experience rather than deduce
their conclusion from a few axioms, and set them out in logical order.
Whence it follows, that if any one wishes to teach a doctrine to a whole
nation (not to speak of the whole human race), and to be understood by
all men in every particular, he will seek to support his teaching with
experience, and will endeavor to suit his reasonings and the definitions
of his doctrines as far as possible to the understanding of the common
people, who form the majority of mankind, and he will not set them forth
in logical sequence nor adduce the definitions which serve to establish
them. Otherwise he writes only for the learned--that is, he will be
understood by only a small proportion of the human race.

All Scripture was written primarily for an entire people, and
secondarily for the whole human race; therefore its contents must
necessarily be adapted as far as possible to the understanding of the
masses, and proved only by examples drawn from experience. We will
explain ourselves more clearl