Reason.

1. IN giving Reasons, Men commonly do with us as the Woman does with her Child; when she goes to Mar∣ket about her Business, she tells it she goes to buy it a fine Thing, to buy it a Cake or some Plums. They give us such Reasons as they think we will be catched withal, but never let us know the Truth.

2. When the School-Men talk of Recta Ratio in Morals, either they understand Reason as it is govern’d by a Command from above; or else they say no more than a Woman, when she says a thing is so, because it is so; that is, her Reason per∣swades her ’tis so. The other Acception has Sense in it. As take a Law of the Land, I must not depopulate, my Rea∣son tells me so. Why? Because if I do, I incurr the detriment.

3. The Reason of a Thing is not to be enquired after, till you are sure the Thing it self be so. We commonly are at [What’s the Reason of it?] before we are sure of the Thing. ’Twas an excellent Que∣stion of my Lady Cotten, when Sir Robert Cotten was magnifying of a Shooe, which was Moses’s or Noah’s, and wondring at the strange Shape and Fashion of it: But Mr. Cotten, says she, are you sure it is a Shooe.