THE TRUE STATE OF ICELAND ad. 



1592. 

 annexe unto it) downe from heaven together with it 

 selfe : or that the same thing should be common unto 

 heaven, being of one & the same matter with ise, & so 

 that the prison of the damned may be thought to have 

 changed places with the heavenly paradise, & all by the 

 oversight of these Historiographers. Wherfore seeing 

 the matter of this historicall ise is neither elementarie 

 (as we have so often proved by this place of Frisius) 

 neither spirituall, nor infernall, both which we have 

 concluded evidently, in short, yet sound and substantiall 

 reasons : nor yet celestiall matter, which, religion for- 

 biddeth a man once to imagine : it is altogether manifest, 

 y* according to the said historiographers, there is no 

 such thing at all, which notwithstanding they blaze 

 abroad with such astonishing admiration, & which we 

 thinke to be an ordinary matter commonly scene and 

 felt. Therefore it is, and it is not : which proposition 

 when it shall fall out true, in the same respect, in the 

 same part, and at the same time, then will we give 

 credite to these frozen miracles. Now therefore the 

 Reader may easily judge, that we need none other helpe 

 to refute these things, but onely to shew how they 

 disagree one with another. But it is no marvell that 

 he, which hath once enclined himselfe to the fabulous 

 reports of the common people, should oftentimes fall 

 into error. There was a like strange thing invented by 

 another concerning the sympathy or conjoining of this 

 ise : namely, that it followeth the departure of that huge 

 lumpe, whereof it is a part, so narrowly, & so swiftly, 

 that a man by no diligence can observe it, by reason 

 of the unchangeable necessitie of following. But we 

 have oftentimes scene such a solitarie lumpe of ise 

 remaining (after the other parts thereof were driven 

 away) and lying upon the shore for many weekes 

 together, without any posts or engines at all to stay 

 it. Therefore it is plaine that these miracles of ise 

 are grounded upon a more slippery foundation then 

 ise it selfe. 



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