4 July 1810 26

Fallacies Ch. 1 Authority worship

4

. 4 Churchmen's Sinister interest

3. In this situation /Thus circumstanced/ he beholds absurdity and insincerity crowned with honour and /held in honour and crowned /incrusted/ with/ reward /honoured and rewarded/: good sense /wisdom/ and sincerity held in disgrace and afflicted /disgraced /dis[...?]ced/ and punished/ and kept down /under/ on a state of punishment /disability/ For let the propositions be what they will the very circumstance of its thought necessary to employ reward or punishment to cause /engage/ a man to declare his belief in them /say he believes them/ is of itself if false proof positive of there not being believed to be true by him by whom such means for engaging men to profess a belief in their being true and thus far proof presumptive of their not being actually true but to a degree of absurdity false: and thence of their not being belived to be true by the person who by such means in induced to profess his believing them true /to believe them true/. That by means of reward or punishment a man should be made really and immediately to believe the truth of a thing which he believes to be false or vice versa is not possible in any single instance. (a) What by such means it is possible to make a man do is 1. to refrain from declaring his disbelief in it: 2. to make him declare a /his/ belief in it: 3. to make him turn instantly aside from all considerations tedning to confirm him in his disbelief of it 4 to look out for and fix his attention on all considerations tending to induce him to believe in it: especially authority, by an instrument by which in so many instances men have contrived to force themselves into the belief of /p[...?] false/ propositions in dispute[?] /repugnancy/ of the concomitant evidence of their own senses