sibi adimunt, qui sine ullo judicio inventa maiorum probant, et ab aliis pecudum more ducuntur:”  “They neglect their own wisdom, who without any judgment approve the invention of those that forewent them; and suffer themselves after the manner of beasts, to be led by them;” by the advantage of which sloth and dullness, ignorance is now become so powerful a tyrant, as it hath set true philosophy, physics, and divinity in a pillory; and written over the first, “Contra negantem principia;"[22] over the second, “Virtus specifica;"[23] over the third, “Ecclesta Romana."[24]

But for myself, I shall never be persuaded, that God hath shut up all light of learning within the lanthorn of Aristotle’s brains:  or that it was ever said unto him, as unto Esdras, “Accendam in corde tuo Lucernam intellectus";[25] that God hath given invention but to the heathen, and that they only invaded nature, and found the strength and bottom thereof; the same nature having consumed all her store, and left nothing of price to after-ages.  That these and these be the causes of these and these effects, time hath taught us; and not reason:  and so hath experience without art.  The cheese-wife knoweth it as well as the philosopher, that sour rennet doth coagulate her milk into a curd.  But if we ask a reason of this cause, why the sourness doth it? whereby it doth it? and the manner how?  I think that there is nothing to be found in vulgar philosophy, to satisfy this and many other like vulgar questions.  But man to cover his ignorance in the least things, who can not give a true reason for the grass under his feet, why it should be green rather than red, or of any other color; that could never yet discover the way and reason of nature’s working, in those which are far less noble creatures than himself; who is far more noble than the heavens themselves:  “Man (saith Solomon) that can hardly discern the things that are upon the earth, and with great labor find out the things that are before us”; that hath so short a time in the world, as he no sooner begins to learn, than to die; that hath in his memory but borrowed knowledge; in his understanding, nothing truly; that is ignorant of the essence of his own soul, and which the wisest of the naturalists (if Aristotle be he) could never so much as define, but by the action and effect, telling us what it works (which all men knew as well as he) but not what it is, which neither he, nor any else, doth know, but God that created it; ("For though I were perfect, yet I know not my soul,” saith Job).  Man, I say, that is but an idiot in the next cause of his own life, and in the cause of all actions of his life, will (notwithstanding) examine the art of God in creating the world; of God, who (saith Job) “is so excellent as we know him not”; and examine the beginning of the work, which had end before mankind had a beginning of being.  He will disable God’s power to make a world, without matter to make it of.  He will rather