A comparison between the ancients and the moderns arises in a general refutation of the doctrine of decay, as naturally as the question of the stability of the powers of nature arises in a comparison between the ancients and moderns.  Hakewill protests against excessive admiration of antiquity, just because it encourages the opinion of the world’s decay.  He gives his argument a much wider scope than the French controversialists.  For him the field of debate includes not only science, arts, and literature, but physical qualities and morals.  He seeks to show that mentally and physically there has been no decay, and that the morals of modern Christendom are immensely superior to those of pagan times.  There has been social progress, due to Christianity; and there has been an advance in arts and knowledge.

  Multa dies uariusque labor mutabilis aeui
   Rettulit in melius.

Hakewill, like Tassoni, surveys all the arts and sciences, and concludes that the moderns are equal to the ancients in poetry, and in almost all other things excel them. [Footnote:  Among modern poets equal to the ancients, Hakewill signalises Sir Philip Sidney, Spenser, Marot, Ronsard, Ariosto, Tasso (Book iii. chap. 8, Section 3).]

One of the arguments which he urges against the theory of degeneration is pragmatic—­its paralysing effect on human energy.  “The opinion of the world’s universal decay quails the hopes and blunts the edge of men’s endeavours.”  And the effort to improve the world, he implies, is a duty we owe to posterity.

“Let not then the vain shadows of the world’s fatal decay keep us either from looking backward to the imitation of our noble predecessors or forward in providing for posterity, but as our predecessors worthily provided, for us, so let our posterity bless us in providing for them, it being still as uncertain to us what generations are still to ensue, as it was to our predecessors in their ages.”

We note the suggestion that history may be conceived as a sequence of improvements in civilisation, but we note also that Hakewill here is faced by the obstacle which Christian theology offered to the logical expansion of the idea.  It is uncertain what generations are still to ensue.  Roger Bacon stood before the same dead wall.  Hakewill thinks that he is living in the last age of the world; but how long it shall last is a question which cannot be resolved, “it being one of those secrets which the Almighty hath locked up in the cabinet of His own counsel.”  Yet he consoles himself and his readers with a consideration which suggests that the end is not yet very near.” [Footnote:  See Book i. chap. 2, Section 4, p. 24.] It is agreed upon all sides by Divines that at least two signs forerunning the world’s end remain unaccomplished-the subversion of Rome and the conversion of the Jews.  And when they shall be accomplished God only knows, as yet in man’s judgment there being little appearance of the one or the other.”