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Perhaps Beyond Our Ken
Denis Frayssinous, trans. by John Benjamin Jones, Chapter Two in A Defence of Christianity (Gilbert & Rivington: December 1835), pp. 63-88.
Truth is as much the first want as it is the first good of mankind:
yes, truth in religion, which by giving us high and pure ideas of the
Divinity, teaches us that our homage ought to be worthy of it; truth in
morality, which without rigour, as without weak indulgence, traces out
to men in all situations their respective duties; truth in policy,
which by rendering authority more just, and subjects more submissive,
protects governments from the passions of the multitude, and the
multitude from the tyranny of governments; truth in our tribunals,
which makes vice afraid, reassures and comforts the innocent, and
conduces to the triumph of justice; truth in education, which by
rendering conduct accordant with doctrine, makes teachers to be the
models, as well as the masters of infancy and youth; truth in
literature and in the arts, which preserves them from the contagion of
bad taste, from false ornaments, and from false thoughts; truth in the
commerce of life, which by banishing fraud and imposture, warrants the
common safety; truth in every thing, truth before every thing, this is
that which the whole human race from its inmost soul is ever seeking,
so thoroughly convinced are all men that truth is useful and falsehood
hurtful.
Alexander Leitch, "Summary of the Argument" in Ethics of Theism (Harvard: 1868), pp. 15-46.
It has been said by a great mind, that confusion is worse than error.1
Erroneous statements and opinions, in their naked deformity, are
generally too hideous to win the regard and confidence of men even in
their present depraved condition; while the manifestation of what is
true, in its simple grandeur and pure light, is often too bright and
fair to be agreeable to the eye and the heart of man. The great work
which a lover of truth finds to do, is to separate the
conglomerate mass of knowledge, or what men call knowledge, into its
two component parts, the true and the false. What is false owes all its
plausibility and power to its being associated and mingled with what is
true. What is true, is rendered dim and uncertain and weak by being
blended and confounded with the erroneous. The human mind is like a
thrashing-floor. The honest inquirer will be constantly using the fan,
to separate the chaff from the wheat.