The Epistle Dedicatory.
mon Methods, that your Allowance and Approbation of the Design of this Treatise, will at least preserve it from being condemned without reading; and will prevail to have those Parts a little weighed, which might otherwise, perhaps, be thought to deserve no Consideration, for being somewhat out of the common road. The Imputation of Novelty, is a terrible charge amongst those who judge of Men's Heads, as they do of their Perukes, by the Fashion; and can allow none to be right, but the received Doctrines. Truth scarce ever yet carried it by Vote any where, at its first appearance: New Opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other Reason, but because they are not already common. But Truth, like Gold, is not the less so, for being newly brought out of the Mine. 'Tis Trial and Examination must give it price, and not any antick Fashion: And though it be not yet current by the publick stamp; yet it may, for all that, be as old as Nature, and is certainly not the less genuine. Your Lordship can give great and convincing Instances of this, whenever you please to oblige the Publick with some of those large and comprehensive Discoveries, you have made, of Truths hitherto unknown, unless to some few, to whom your Lordship has been pleased not wholly to conceal them. This alone were a sufficient Reason, were there no other, why I should Dedicate this piece to your Lordship; and its having some little Correspondence with soms parts of that nobler and vast System of the Sciences, your Lordship has made so new, exact,and
