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254 OF THE ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING, [XXV.3.. _ 
So we see the heathen poets, when they fall upon a 
libertine passion, do still expostulate with laws and moral- 
ities, as if they were opposite and malignant to nature; 
Et quod natura remittit, invida jura negant. So said 
Dendamis the Indian unto Alexander’s messengers, that 
he had heard somewhat of Pythagoras, and some other 
of the wise men of Grecia, and ‘that he held them for 
excellent men: but that they had a fault, which was that 
they had in too great reverence and veneration a thing 
they called law and manners. So it must be confessed, 
that a great part of the law moral is of that perfec- 
tion, whereunto the light of nature cannot aspire: how 
then is it that man is said to have, by the light and law 
of nature, some notions and conceits of virtue and vice, 
justice and wrong, good and evil? Thus, because the 
light of nature is used in two several senses; the one, 
that which springeth from. reason, sense, induction, argu- 
ment, according to the laws of heaven and earth; the 
other, that which is imprinted upon the spirit of man by 
an inward instinct, according to the law of conscience, 
which is a sparkle of the purity of his first estate; in 
which latter sense only he is participant of some light 
and discerning touching the perfection of the moral law: | 
but how? sufficient to check the vice, but not to inform 
the duty. So then the doctrine of religion, as well moral 
- as mystical, is not to be attained but by inspiration and 
revelation from God. 
4. The use notwithstanding of reason in spiritual things, 
and the latitude thereof, is very great and general: for it 
is not for nothing that’ the apostle calleth religion our 
reasonable service of God; insomuch as the very cere- 
monies and figures of the old law were full of reason and 
signification, much more than the ceremonies of idolatry 
