his discourse or reasoning make the same words stand for different collections of simple ideas.  If men should do so in their reckonings, I wonder who would have to do with them?  One who would speak thus in the affairs and business of the world, and call 8 sometimes seven, and sometimes nine, as best served his advantage, would presently have clapped upon him, one of the two names men are commonly disgusted with.  And yet in arguings and learned contests, the same sort of proceedings passes commonly for wit and learning; but to me it appears a greater dishonesty than the misplacing of counters in the casting up a debt; and the cheat the greater, by how much truth is of greater concernment and value than money.

6.  Thirdly, Affected Obscurity, as in the Peripatetic and other sects of Philosophy.

Thirdly.  Another abuse of language is an affected obscurity; by either applying old words to new and unusual significations; or introducing new and ambiguous terms, without defining either; or else putting them so together, as may confound their ordinary meaning.  Though the Peripatetick philosophy has been most eminent in this way, yet other sects have not been wholly clear of it.  There are scarce any of them that are not cumbered with some difficulties (such is the imperfection of human knowledge,) which they have been fain to cover with obscurity of terms, and to confound the signification of words, which, like a mist before people’s eyes, might hinder their weak parts from being discovered.  That body and extension in common use, stand for two distinct ideas, is plain to any one that will but reflect a little.  For were their signification precisely the same, it would be as proper, and as intelligible to say, ‘the body of an extension,’ as the ’extension of a body;’ and yet there are those who find it necessary to confound their signification.  To this abuse, and the mischiefs of confounding the signification of words, logic, and the liberal sciences as they have been handled in the schools, have given reputation; and the admired Art of Disputing hath added much to the natural imperfection of languages, whilst it has been made use of and fitted to perplex the signification of words, more than to discover the knowledge and truth of things:  and he that will look into that sort of learned writings, will find the words there much more obscure, uncertain, and undetermined in their meaning, than they are in ordinary conversation.

7.  Logic and Dispute have must have contributed to this.

This is unavoidably to be so, where men’s parts and learning are estimated by their skill in disputing.  And if reputation and reward shall attend these conquests, which depend mostly on the fineness and niceties of words, it is no wonder if the wit of man so employed, should perplex, involve, and subtilize the signification of sounds, so as never to want something to say in opposing or defending any question; the victory being adjudged not to him who had truth on his side, but the last word in the dispute.