viewing a Stone in the form of an Altar with Ashes on it, and the footsteps of men on those ashes, or some words, if you will, as Optimo Maximo, or τῷ ἀγνώστῳ θεῷ, or the like, written or scralled out upon the ashes; and one of them should cry out, Assuredly here have been some men here that have done this: but the other more nice then wise should reply, Nay, it may possibly be otherwise; for this alone may have naturally grown into this very shape, and the seeming ashes may be no ashes, that is, no remainders of any fewell burnt there, but some unexplicable and imperceptible motions of the Aire, or other particles of this fluid Matter that is active every where, have wrought some parts of the Matter into the form and nature of ashes, and have fridg'd and play'd about so, that they have also figured those intelligible Characters in the same. But would not any body deem it a piece of weaknesse no less then dotage for the other man one whit to recede from his former apprehension, but as fully as ever to agree with what he pronounced first, notwithstanding this bare possibility of being otherwise?
So of Anchors that have been digged up, either in plain fields or mountainous places, as also the Roman Urnes with ashes and inscriptions, as Severianus, Ful. Linus, and the like, or Roman Coins with the effigies and names of the Cæsars on them, or that which is more ordinary, the Sculls of men in every Church-yard, with the right figure, and all those necessary perforations for the passing of the vessels, besides those conspicuous hollows for the eyes and rowes of teeth, the Os Styloeides, Ethoeides, and what not? if a man will say of them, that the Motion of the particles of the Matter, or some hidden Spermatick power has gendered these both Anchors, Urnes, Coins, and Sculls in the ground, he doth but pronounce that which humane reason must admit as possible: Nor can any man ever so demonstrate that those Coins, Anchors and Urnes were once the Artifice of men, or that this or that Scull was once a part of a living man, that he shall force an acknowledgment that it is impossible that it should be otherwise. But yet I do not think that any man, without doing manifest violence to his Faculties, can at all suspend his assent, but freely and fully agree that this or that Scull was once part of a living man, and that these Anchors, Urnes and Coins, were certainly once made by humane artifice, notwithstanding the possibility of being otherwise.
3. And what I haves said of Assent is also true in Dissent. For the Mind of man, not craz'd nor prejudic'd, will fully and unreconcilably disagree, by its own naturall sagacity, where notwithstanding the thing that it doth thus resolvedly and undoubtingly reject, no wit of man can prove impossible to be true. As if we should make such a Fiction as this, that Archimedes with the same individuall body that he had when the Souldiers slew him, is now safely intent upon his Geometricall Figures under ground, at the Center of the Earth, farre from the noise and din of this world, that might disturb his Meditations, or distract him in his curious delineations he makes with his Rod upon the dust; which no man living can prove impossible: Yet if any man does not as unreconcilably dissent from such a Fable as this as from any Falshood imaginable, assuredly that man is next door to madness or dotage, or does enormous violence to the free use of his Faculties.
