THE FIRST BOOK. 33 



never meet ; and when they see such digladiation about sub 

 tleties, and matters of no use or moment, they easily fall upon 

 that judgment of Dionysius of Syracusa, Verba ista sunt senum 

 otiosorum. 



(7) Notwithstanding, certain it is that if those schoolmen to 

 their great thirst of truth and unwearied travail of wit had 

 joined variety and universality of reading and contemplation, 

 they had proved excellent lights, to the great advancement of 

 all learning and knowledge ; but as they are, they are groat 

 undertakers indeed, and fierce with dark keeping. But as in 

 the inquiry of the divine truth, their pride inclined to leave 

 the oracle of God s word, and to vanish in the mixture of their 

 own inventions ; so in the inquisition of nature, they ever left 

 the oracle of God s works, and adored the deceiving and 

 deformed images which the unequal mirror of their own 

 minds, or a few received authors or principles, did represent 

 unto them. And thus much for the second disease of learn 

 ing. 



(8) For the third vice or disease of learning, which con- 

 cerneth deceit or untruth, it is of all the rest the foulest ; aa 

 that which doth destroy the essential form of knowledge, 

 which is nothing but a representation of truth : for the truth 

 of being and the truth of knowing are one, differing no more 

 than the direct beam and the beam reflected. This vice there- 



I fore brancheth itself into two sorts ; delight in deceiving and 

 i aptness to be deceived ; imposture and credulity ; which, al- 

 i though they appear to be of a diverse nature, the one seeming 

 I to proceed of cunning and the other of simplicity, yet cer- 

 ] tainly they do for the most part concur : for, as the verse 

 i noteth 



&quot; Percontatorem fugito, nam garrulus idem est,&quot; 



j an inquisitive man is a prattler; so upon the like reason a 

 I credulous man is a deceiver : as we see it in fame, that he 

 \ that will easily believe rumours will as easily augment 

 fj rumours and add somewhat to them of his own ; which Tacitus 

 || wisely noteth, when he saith, Finyunt simul creduntque : so 

 I] great an affinity hath fiction and belief. 



(9) This facility of credit and accepting or admitting things 

 D weakly authorised or warranted is of two kinds according to 

 1 the subject : for it is either a belief of history, or, as the law- 

 y yers speak, matter of fact ; or else of matter of art and opinion, 

 a As to the former, we see the experience and inconvenience 

 1 of this error in ecclesiastical history ; which hath too easily 

 received and registered reports and narrations of miracles 



B 84 



