11. Thirdly, using words variously is trifling with them.
Though yet concerning most words used in discourses,
equally argumentative and controversial, there is this more to be complained of, which is the worst sort of trifling,
and which sets us yet further from the certainty of knowledge we hope to attain by them, or find in them; viz., that
most writers are so far from instructing us in the nature and knowledge of things, that they use their words loosely
and uncertainly, and do not. by using them constantly and steadily in the same significations, make plain and clear
deductions of words one from another, and make their discourses coherent and clear, (how little soever they were
instructive); which were not difficult to do, did they not find it convenient to shelter their ignorance or obstinacy
under the obscurity and perplexedness of their terms: to which, perhaps, inadvertency and ill custom do in many
men much contribute.
