VI. 12.] THE FIRST BOOK. 49 



12. Neither did the dispensation of God vary in the 

 times after our Saviour came into the world; for our 

 Saviour himself did first show his power to subdue 

 ignorance, by his conference with the priests and doctors 

 of the law, before he showed his power to subdue nature 

 by his miracles. And the coming of the Holy Spirit .was 

 chiefly figured and expressed in the similitude and gift of 

 tongues, which are but vehicula scientix. 



13. So in the election of those instruments, \vhich_jt 

 pleased God to use for the plantation of the faith, not 

 withstanding that at the first he did employ persons 

 altogether unlearned, otherwise than by inspiration, more 

 evidently to declare his immediate working, and to abase 

 all human wisdom or knowledge ; yet nevertheless that 

 counsel of his was no sooner performed, but in the next 

 vicissitude and succession he did send his divine truth into 

 the world, waited on with other learnings, as with servants 

 or handmaids : for so we see Saint Paul, who was only 

 learned amongst the Apostles, had his pen most used in 

 the scriptures of the New Testament. 



1 4. So again we find that many of the ancient bishops 

 and fathers of the Church were excellently read and 

 studied in all the learning of the heathen; insomuch 

 that the edict of the Emperor Julianus (whereby it was 

 interdicted unto Christians to be admitted into schools, 

 lectures, or exercises of learning) was esteemed and ac 

 counted a more pernicious engine and machination 

 against the Christian Faith, than were all the sanguinary 

 prosecutions of his predecessors; neither could the 

 emulation and jealousy of Gregory the first of that name, 

 bishop of Rome, ever obtain the opinion of piety or de 

 votion; but contrariwise received the censure of humour, 

 malignity and pusillanimity, even amongst holy men ; in 







