6 0^ THE ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING. [l. 3. 



brought before him, according unto their proprieties, which 

 gave the occasion to the fall : but it was the proud know 

 ledge of good and evil, with an intent in man to give law 

 unto himself, and to depend no more upon God s com 

 mandments, which was the form of the temptation. 

 Neither is it any quantity of knowledge, how great soever, 

 that can make the mind of man to swell ; for nothing can 

 fill, much less extend the soul of man, but God and the 

 contemplation of God ; and therefore Salomon, speaking 

 of the two principal senses of inquisition, the eye and the 

 ear, afnrmeth that the eye is never satisfied with seeing, 

 nor the ear with hearing ; and if there be no fulness, then 

 is the continent greater than the content : so of knowledge 

 itself, and the mind of man, whereto the senses are but 

 reporters, he defineth likewise in these words, placed after 

 that Kalendar or Ephemerides which he maketh of the 

 diversities of times and seasons for all actions and pur 

 poses; and concludeth thus: God hath made all things 

 beautiful, or decent r , in the true return of their seasons : Also 

 he hath placed the world in man s heart, yet cannot man find 

 out the work which God worketh from the beginning to the^ 

 end : declaring not obscurely, that God hath framed the 

 mind of man as a mirror or glass, capable of the image of 

 the universal world, and joyful to receive the impression 

 thereof, as the eye joyeth to receive light ; and not only 

 delighted in beholding the variety of things and vicissitude 

 of times, but raised also to find out and discern the ordin 

 ances and decrees, which throughout all those changes 

 are infallibly observed, And although he doth insinuate 

 that the supreme or summary law of nature, which he 

 calleth The work which God worketh from the beginning to 

 the end, is not possible to be found out by man ; yet that 

 doth not derogate from the capacity of the mind, but may 



