(16) Wherefore, to conclude this part, let it be observed, that there be two principal duties and services, besides ornament and illustration, which philosophy and human learning do perform to faith and religion.  The one, because they are an effectual inducement to the exaltation of the glory of God.  For as the Psalms and other Scriptures do often invite us to consider and magnify the great and wonderful works of God, so if we should rest only in the contemplation of the exterior of them as they first offer themselves to our senses, we should do a like injury unto the majesty of God, as if we should judge or construe of the store of some excellent jeweller by that only which is set out toward the street in his shop.  The other, because they minister a singular help and preservative against unbelief and error.  For our Saviour saith, “You err, not knowing the Scriptures, nor the power of God;” laying before us two books or volumes to study, if we will be secured from error:  first the Scriptures, revealing the will of God, and then the creatures expressing His power; whereof the latter is a key unto the former:  not only opening our understanding to conceive the true sense of the Scriptures by the general notions of reason and rules of speech, but chiefly opening our belief, in drawing us into a due meditation of the omnipotency of God, which is chiefly signed and engraven upon His works.  Thus much therefore for divine testimony and evidence concerning the true dignity and value of learning.

VII. (1) As for human proofs, it is so large a field, as in a discourse of this nature and brevity it is fit rather to use choice of those things which we shall produce, than to embrace the variety of them.  First, therefore, in the degrees of human honour amongst the heathen, it was the highest to obtain to a veneration and adoration as a God.  This unto the Christians is as the forbidden fruit.  But we speak now separately of human testimony, according to which—­that which the Grecians call apotheosis, and the Latins relatio inter divos—­was the supreme honour which man could attribute unto man, specially when it was given, not by a formal decree or act of state (as it was used among the Roman Emperors), but by an inward assent and belief.  Which honour, being so high, had also a degree or middle term; for there were reckoned above human honours, honours heroical and divine:  in the attribution and distribution of which honours we see antiquity made this difference; that whereas founders and uniters of states and cities, lawgivers, extirpers of tyrants, fathers of the people, and other eminent persons in civil merit, were honoured but with the titles of worthies or demigods, such as were Hercules, Theseus, Minus, Romulus, and the like; on the other side, such as were inventors and authors of new arts, endowments, and commodities towards man’s life, were ever consecrated amongst the gods themselves, as was Ceres, Bacchus, Mercurius,