more generally Scepticks.  This sect made their chiefest good to consist in a sedateness of mind, exempt from all passions; in regulating their opinions, and moderating their passions, which they called Ataxia and Metriopathia; and in suspending their judgment in regard of good and evil, truth or falsehood, which they called Epechi.  Sextus Empiricus, who lived in the second century, under the Emperor Antoninus Pius, writ ten books against the mathematicians or astrologers, and three of the Phyrrhonian opinion.  The word is derived from the Greek SKEPTESZAI, quod est, considerare, speculare. [To consider or speculate]

143 l He cou’d reduce, &c.] The old philosophers thought to extract notions out of natural things, as chymists do spirits and essences; and, when they had refined them into the nicest subtilties, gave them as insignificant names as those operators do their extractions:  But (as Seneca says) the subtiler things are they are but the nearer to nothing.  So are all their definitions of things by acts the nearer to nonsense.

147 m Where Truth, &c.] Some authors have mistaken truth for a real thing, when it is nothing but a right method of putting those notions or images of things (in the understanding of man) into the same and order that their originals hold in nature, and therefore Aristotle says Unumquodque sicut habet secundum esse, ita se habet secundum veritatem.  Met.  L. ii. [As every thing has a secondary essence, therefore it has a secondary truth]

148 n Like words congeal’d, &c.] Some report in Nova Zembla, and Greenland, mens’ words are wont to be frozen in the air, and at the thaw may heard.

151 In School-Divinity as able,
    As o he that Hight, Irrefragable, &c.]
Here again is another alteration of three or lines, as I think, for the worse.  Some specific epithets were added to the title of some famous doctors, as Angelicus, Irrefragabilis, Subtilis, [Angelic, Unopposable, Discriminating] &c.  Vide Vossi Etymolog.  Baillet Jugemens de Scavans, & Possevin’s Apparatus

153 p A Second Thomas or at once,
    To name them all, another dunce. 
Thomas Aquinas, a Dominican friar, was born in 1224, and studied at Cologne and Paris.  He new modelled the school-divinity, and was therefore called the Angelic Doctor, and Eagle of Divines.  The most illustrious persons of his time were ambitious of his friendship, and put a high value on his merits, so that they offered him bishopricks, which he refused with as much ardor as others seek after them.  He died in the fiftieth year of his age, and was canonized by Pope John XII.  We have his works in eighteen volumes, several times printed.

Johannes Dunscotus was a very learned man, who lived about the end of the thirteenth and beginning of the fourteenth century.  The English and Scotch strive which of them shall have the honour of his birth.  The English say, he was born in Northumberland:  the Scots alledge he was born at Duns, in the Mers, the neighbouring county to Northumberland, and hence was called Dunscotus.  Moreri, Buchanan, and other Scotch historians, are of this opinion, and for proof cite his epitaph: