Gentle critick! when thou hast weighed all this, and considered within thyself how much of thy own knowledge, discourse, and conversation has been pestered and disordered at one time or other, by this, and this only:—What a pudder and racket in Councils about οὐσία and ὑπόστασις ; and in the Schools of the learned about power and about spirit;—about essences, and about quintessences;⸺about substances, and about space.⸺What confusion in greater Theatres from words of little meaning, and as indeterminate a sense! when thou considerest this, thou wilt not wonder at my uncle Toby’s perplexities,—thou wilt drop a tear of pity upon his scarp and his counterscarp;—his glacis and his covered way;—his ravelin and his half-moon: ’Twas not by ideas,—by Heaven; his life was put in jeopardy by words.
Table of Contents
II
132