when I read Seneca, [3354]"methinks I am beyond all human fortunes, on the top of a hill above mortality.”  Plutarch saith as much of Homer, for which cause belike Niceratus, in Xenophon, was made by his parents to con Homer’s Iliads and Odysseys without book, ut in virum bonum evaderet, as well to make him a good and honest man, as to avoid idleness.  If this comfort be got from philosophy, what shall be had from divinity?  What shall Austin, Cyprian, Gregory, Bernard’s divine meditations afford us?

[3355] “Qui quid sit pulchrum, quid turpe, quid utile, quid non,
        Plenius et melius Chrysippo et Crantore dicunt.”

Nay, what shall the Scripture itself?  Which is like an apothecary’s shop, wherein are all remedies for all infirmities of mind, purgatives, cordials, alteratives, corroboratives, lenitives, &c.  “Every disease of the soul,” saith [3356]Austin, “hath a peculiar medicine in the Scripture; this only is required, that the sick man take the potion which God hath already tempered.” [3357]Gregory calls it “a glass wherein we may see all our infirmities,” ignitum colloquium, Psalm cxix. 140. [3358]Origen a charm.  And therefore Hierom prescribes Rusticus the monk, [3359]"continually to read the Scripture, and to meditate on that which he hath read; for as mastication is to meat, so is meditation on that which we read.”  I would for these causes wish him that, is melancholy to use both human and divine authors, voluntarily to impose some task upon himself, to divert his melancholy thoughts:  to study the art of memory, Cosmus Rosselius, Pet.  Ravennas, Scenkelius’ Detectus, or practise brachygraphy, &c., that will ask a great deal of attention:  or let him demonstrate a proposition in Euclid, in his five last books, extract a square root, or study Algebra:  than which, as [3360]Clavius holds, “in all human disciplines nothing can be more excellent and pleasant, so abstruse and recondite, so bewitching, so miraculous, so ravishing, so easy withal and full of delight,” omnem humanum captum superare videtur.  By this means you may define ex ungue leonem, as the diverb is, by his thumb alone the bigness of Hercules, or the true dimensions of the great [3361]Colossus, Solomon’s temple, and Domitian’s amphitheatre out of a little part.  By this art you may contemplate the variation of the twenty-three letters, which may be so infinitely varied, that the words complicated and deduced thence will not be contained within the compass of the firmament; ten words may be varied 40,320 several ways:  by this art you may examine how many men may stand one by another in the whole superficies of the earth, some say 148,456,800,000,000, assignando singulis passum quadratum (assigning a square foot to each), how many men, supposing all the world as habitable as France, as fruitful and so long-lived, may be born in 60,000 years, and so may you demonstrate with [3362]Archimedes how many sands the mass of the whole world might contain if