Selected quad for the lemma: sense_n
Text snippets containing the quad
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A65776
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Chrysaspis to Querela a letter / publish't by a friend of Chrysaspis.; Chrysaspis
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White, Thomas, 1593-1676.
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1660
(1660)
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Wing W1813; ESTC R13592
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16,534
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48
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Noble Lord Brouncker who with a favour and civility towards me matchless by any thing but his own Learning and excellent endowments demonstrated the proportion I aym'd at to be a plain mistake yet that if my fifth proposition had held the thing had been done His Lordship having thus fully convinc'd me and thus highly oblig'd me I return'd him my humblest acknowledgements and immediately directed the suppression of the Copies as your self confess you found them after which for you to come with a clamorous and printed confutation was extremely both unhandsome and uncharitable and lookt upon as such by the civillest Wits of our Nation You say my Treatise contains 13 Propositions wherein I wonder you could mistake Not onely the matter being diverse in three of the four last and plainly appertaining to a former work called Exercitatio Geometrica but the very print and paper being divers and Finis set at the end of the ninth Proposition so that it is evident Chrysaspis was finisht in nine Propositions to which most of your reasons are out of a mistake or not understanding the work and indeed I have from better Mathematicians then my self that you understand not well your own so many and notable errors they observe in one or two leaves of your Anger against me Now as to the Appendix first you say Guldin or Gulden 't is all one to me invented the demonstration I repeat out of my Exercitatio Whether you speak by hear-say or by the chance of cross and pyle I know not but whoever reads the two Demonstrations will find them as different as can be and yet you tell your Reader I acknowledge them to be the same You add I put a second Demonstration and that you say is mine own and the second I confess hath some likeness with Guldins for it argues the same way though it proceed by streight lines and Guldins by circular ones There follows in your work your Geometrical Examination of my errours In which I intend neither to justifie what I have written nor reprehend what you have not taking it to be worth my pains till I am assured whether my Demonstration of the Quadrature will reach to some other proportion since the chief end for which I made it is miscarried For I sought not commendation to my self out of Geometry but an attestation to my other Writings which once disappointed the rest I have written is not worth my pains to rectifie As for my bitterness against Guldin it is not against his Person who as you say never offended me neither did I ever know him but against a base abuse done to Geometry to mingle with its purity the scurf of probability and so to bring it into the scorn of being held no better then Logical discourses This he having attempted by putting into his Geometrical Book fantastical Propositions and colouring his supposed error by Arguments not favouring of Geometry made me say he knew not the duty of a Geometrician and though he might have many Geometrical things in him was not therefore a Mathematician as not having the judgement to discern betwixt the use of probable Reasons and demonstrative ones but thought the Arguments which himself took to be but probable might lawfully be entertain'd in Geometry This is the imputation I lay'd to his charge and prov'd by those Instances you cite and confess to be his Yet you are displeased with me and to make your displeasure seem reasonable to the Reader you impose upon me that I say he holds those errors since he recalled them which I neither do nor concerns it me to do Now whether it ought to be interpreted gall when a man layes a Charge and his Proof down let the discreet and experienc't judge Ignorance it may be in him that does the wrong not passion if his charge be no greater then his evidence maintains You say farther that I tax him with morall vices and I cannot deny I thought he had a vanity in excusing himself nor do his words express any less but for any great viciousness I am far from either saying or thinking it of him And if his proceedings made me conceive he was one of that kind of men who draw all things to incertainty I do not therefore infer he doth so in matters of Faith on which he toucheth not as far as I have understood nor can any such sence be fairly deduc'd out of my words since every one of that kind of men doth it in his own sphere not in all matters Much less do I tax him of Heresie whereof I accuse not the Persons even of them whose sentences I doubt not are Heresies True it is the endeavours of those whoever they are that seek to destroy all certainty I perfectly hate and use what means I can to shew their perniciousness And with this I think I have answer'd your moral oppositions There is indeed a Geometrical one against the thirteenth Proposition of which I make no mention because it is the same with the sixth wherein I have before affirmed that my Lord Brouncker had convinced me and so I have nothing to reply Onely I hope my yielding to my Lord will be a pledge to you that I shall be willing to do the like in my errors in other Sciences as you charitably pray for me in which prayer I hartily joyn adding this farther that I may find out men who will endeavour to shew me my errors for I doubt not but there are divers and I hope I am willing to know them onely I require proper proofs fit for the understanding not extrinsical motives of the will to make it prevent prudence To come to an end if you can have so just an opinion of me that it is want of understanding and not malice that hath been the cause of any errors of which I have not given satisfaction I shall be glad for both our sakes If not I will seek to imitate him to whom it was said to his face Doemonium habes and not fail on my side though unknown to be Your reall well-wisher and faithfull Servant THO. WHITE