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His Lordship, taking it for a postulatum, that the Queen and ministry, both Houses of Parliament, and a vast majority of the landed gentlemen throughout England are running headlong into Popery, lays hold on the occasion to describe "the cruelties in Queen Mary's reign, an inquisition setting up faggots in Smithfield, and executions all over the kingdom.
Now the former postulatum being held, that it is of no import from what originals this vapour proceeds, but either in what angles it strikes and spreads over the understanding, or upon what species of brain it ascends, it will be a very delicate point to cut the feather and divide the several reasons to a nice and curious reader, how this numerical difference in the brain can produce effects of so vast a difference from the same vapour as to be the sole point of individuation between Alexander the Great, Jack of Leyden, and Monsieur Des Cartes.
Have they sufficiently reflected on the tendency of this mode of reasoning? If this be admitted as a postulatum, are they prepared to follow it in all its extent? Suppose their argument granted, what is to be done with all those other qualities upon which man does not set so high a value?
Now, I do affirm it will be absolutely impossible for the candid peruser to go along with me in a great many bright passages, unless upon the several difficulties emergent he will please to capacitate and prepare himself by these directions. And this I lay down as my principal postulatum.
We must show, moreover, the misconceptions and illusions that intrude into syllogisms, the major proposition of which pure reason has supplied a proposition which has perhaps more of the character of a petitio than of a postulatum and that proceed from experience upwards to its conditions.
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