Note 82 — Chapter XIX

“I must, for my own part, confess that councils and synods not only may and have erred, but considering the means how they are managed, it were a great marvel if they did not err, for what men are they of whom those great meetings do consist? Are they the best, the most learned, the most virtuous, the most likely to walk uprightly? No, the greatest, the most ambitious, and many times men of neither judgment nor learning; such are they of whom these bodies do consist. Are these men in common equity likely to determine for truth?”—Vol. i., p. 60, edit. 1765.

“Universality is such a proof of truth as truth itself is ashamed of; for universality is but a quainter and a trimmer name to signify the multitude. Now human authority at the strongest is but weak, but the multitude is the weakest part of human authority; it is the great patron of error, most easily abused and most hardly disabused. The beginning of error may be and mostly is from private persons, but the maintainer and continuer of error is the multitude. Private persons first beget errors in the multitude and make them public; and publicness of them begets them again in private persons. It is a thing which our common experience and practice acquaints us with, that when some private persons have gained authority with the multitude, and infused some error into them and made it public, the publicness of the error gains authority to it, and interchangeably prevails with private persons to entertain it. The most singular and strongest part of human authority is properly in the wisest and most virtuous; and those I trow are not the most universal.”—iii. 164.