representing that you struck at the root
of morality in a principle laid down in your book of Ideas--and that I
took you for a Hobbist!"[43] The difference of opinion between Locke and
Reid is in consequence of an ambiguity in the word _principle_, as
employed by Reid. The removal of a solitary word may cast a luminous ray
over a whole body of philosophy: "If we had called the _infinite_ the
_indefinite_," says Condillac, in his _Traite des Sensations_, "by this
small change of a word we should have avoided the error of imagining
that we have a positive idea of _infinity_, from whence so many false
reasonings have been carried on, not only by metaphysicians, but even by
geometricians." The word _reason_ has been used with different meanings
by different writers; _reasoning_ and _reason_ have been often
confounded; a man may have an endless capacity for _reasoning_, without
being much influenced by _reason_, and to be _reasonable_, perhaps
differs from both! So Moliere tells us,

Raisonner est l'emploi de toute ma maison;
Et le raisonnement en bannit la raison!

In this research on "confusion of words," might enter the voluminous
history of the founders of sects, who have usually employed terms which
had no meaning attached to them, or were so ambiguous that their real
notions have never been comprehended; hence the most chimerical opinions
have been imputed to founders of sects. We may instance that of the
_Antinomians_, whose remarkable denomination explains their doctrine,
expressing that they were "against law!" Their founder was John
Agricola, a follower of Luther, who, while he lived, had kept Agricola's
follies from exploding, which they did when he asserted that there was
no such thing as sin, our salvation depending on faith, and not on
works; and when he declaimed against the _Law of God_. To what length
some of his sect pushed this verbal doctrine is known; but the real
notions of this Agricola probably never will be! Bayle considered him as
a harmless dreamer in theology, who had confused his head by Paul's
controversies with the Jews; but Mosheim, who bestows on this early
reformer the epithets of _ventosus_ and _versipellis_, windy and crafty!
or, as his translator has it, charges him with "vanity, presumption, and
artifice," tells us by the term "law," Agricola only meant the ten
commandments of Moses, which he considered were abrogated by the Gospel,
being designed for the Jews and not for the Chris