Obstacle to Faith among Multitudes; and that in believing of
Mysteries, Propositions will not be the less swallow'd for being
contradictory to Reason.

Hor. But I thought you was not for keeping Men in Ignorance.

Cleo. What I am for, is not the Question. Priests who would bear an
absolute Sway over the Laity, and live luxuriously at their Cost,
ought First to make them believe Implicitly: Whereas an honest Clergy,
that will teach Nothing concerning Religion, but what is consistent
with good Sense, and becoming a rational Creature to believe, ought to
deal uprightly with Men throughout the Whole, and not impose upon
their Understandings in one Point more than they do in another. From
the real Incomprehensibility of God, just Arguments must be drawn for
believing of Mysteries that surpass our Capacities. But when a Man has
good Reason to suspect, that he who instructed him in these Mysteries,
does not believe them himself, it must stagger and obstruct his Faith,
tho' he had no Scruples before, and the Things he had been made to
believe, are no Ways clashing with his Reason. It is not difficult for
a Protestant Divine to make a Man of Sense see the many Absurdities
that are taught by the Church of Rome, the little Claim which Popes
can lay to Infallibility, and the Priestcraft there is in what they
say of purgatory and all that belongs to it. But to persuade him
likewise, that the Gospel requires no Self-denial, nor any Thing that
is irksome to Nature, and that the Generality of the Clergy of _England_
are sincerely endeavouring, in their Lives and Doctrine, to imitate
the Apostles, as nearly as Human Frailty will let them, and is
consistent with the Difference of the Age and Manners between their
Time and ours; to persuade, I say, a Man of Sense, that these Things
are likewise true, would not be so easy a Task. By a Man of Sense, I