Areopagitica · ¶70

Well knows he who uses to consider, that our faith and knowledge thrives by exercise, as well as our limbs and complexion. Truth is compared in Scripture to a streaming fountain; if her waters flow not in a perpetual progression, they sicken into a muddy pool of conformity and tradition. A man may be a heretic in the truth; and if he believe things only because his pastor says so, or the Assembly so determines, without knowing other reason, though his belief be true, yet the very truth he holds becomes his heresy.

John Milton · Gutenberg #608 · print exemplar unidentified
Project Gutenberg #608, updated 23 February 2013; produced by Judith Boss and David Widger
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