THE SECOND BOOK. 83 



the principles and architectures of nature to the rules and 

 policy of governments? Is not the precept of a musician, to 

 tall from a discord or harsh accord upon a concord or sweet 

 accord, alike true in affection? Is not the trope of music to 

 avoid or slide .from the close or cadence, common with the 

 trope of rhetoric of deceiving expectation ? Is not the delight 

 the quavering upon a stop in music the same with the 

 playing of light upon the water ? 



&quot; Splendet tremulo sub luminb pontus.&quot; 



Axe not the organs of the senses of one kind with the organs 

 of reflection, the eye with a glass, the ear with a cave or strait 

 determined and bounded ? Neither are these only similitudes 

 as men of narrow observation may conceive them to be, but the 

 same footsteps of nature, treading or printing upon several 

 subjects or matters. This science therefore (as I understand 

 it) I may justly report as deficient; for I see sometimes the 

 profounder sort of wits, in handling some particular argument 

 will now and then draw a bucket of water out of this well for 

 their present use; but the spring-head thereof seemeth to me 

 not to have been visited, being of so excellent use both for the 

 disclosing of nature and the abridgment of art. 



VI. (1) This science being therefore first placed as a common 

 parent like unto Berecynthia, which had so much hea^Z 

 issue, omnes calicolas, omnes supera alta tenentes ; we may 

 return to the former distribution of the three philosophies- 

 divine, natural and human. And as concerning divine philo- v 

 sophy or natural theology it is that knowledge or rudiment of 

 knowledge concerning God which may be obtained by the con 

 templation of His creatures; which knowledge may be truTy 

 termed divine in respect of the object, and natural in respect 

 of the light. The bounds of this knowledge are, that it suf- 

 faceth to convince atheism, but not to inform religion ; and 

 therefore there was never miracle wrought by God to convert 



Uet 



cof r,-, led him to 



confess a God; but miracles have been wrought to convert 

 idolaters and the superstitious, because no light of nature ex- 

 tendeth to declare the will and true worship of God. For as 

 all works do show forth the power and skill of the workman 

 and not his image, so it is of the works of God, which do show 

 he , omnip , tency 1 and wisdom of the Mak &amp;lt;*, but not His image 

 irL f ere /r% T^ the heathen pinion diff ereth from the 

 jacred truth : for they supposed the world to be the image of 

 God, and man to be an extract or compendious image of the 



