4. People hindered from inquiry.
Besides those whose improvements and informations are straitened by the
narrowness of their fortunes, there are others whose largeness of fortune would plentifully enough supply books,
and other requisites for clearing of doubts, and discovering of truth: but they are cooped in close, by the laws of
their countries, and the strict guards of those whose interest it is to keep them ignorant, lest, knowing more, they
should believe the less in them. These are as far, nay further, from the liberty and opportunities of a fair inquiry,
than these poor and wretched labourers we before spoke of: and however they may seem high and great, are
confined to narrowness of thought, and enslaved in that which should be the freest part of man, their
understandings. This is generally the case of all those who live in places where care is taken to propagate truth
without knowledge; where men are forced, at a venture, to be of the religion of the country; and must therefore
swallow down opinions, as silly people do empiric's pills, without knowing what they are made of, or how they
will work, and having nothing to do but believe that they will do the cure: but in this are much more miserable
than they, in that they are not at liberty to refuse swallowing what perhaps they had rather let alone; or to choose
the physician, to whose conduct they would trust themselves.
