VI. 16.] THE FIRST BOOK. 



that only which is set out toward the street in his sHop. 

 The other, because they minister a singular help and 

 preservative against unbelief and error For our Saviour 

 saith, You err, not knowing the scriptures, nor the power 

 of God ; laying before us two books or volumes to study, 

 if we will be secured from error; first the scriptures, 

 revealing the will of God, and then the creatures ex 

 pressing his power ; whereof the latter is a key unto the 

 former : not only opening our understanding to conceive 

 the true sense of the scriptures, by the general notions 

 of reason and rules of speech ; but chiefly opening our 

 belief, in drawing us into a due meditation of the omni- 

 potency of God, which is chiefly signed and engraven 

 upon his works. Thu^ rnj^ch therefore for divine testi 

 mony and evidence concerning the true dignity and value 



VII. i. As for bnmnTv rm-iof^ it is so large a field, as 

 in a discourse of this nature and brevity it is fit rather to 

 use choice of those things which we shall produce, than 

 to embrace the variety of them, ^irst therefore, in the 

 degrees of human honour amongst theheathen, it was 

 the highest to obtain to a veneration and adoration as a 

 God. This unto the Christians is as the forbidden fruit. 

 But we speak now separately of human testimony: ac 

 cording to which, -that which the Grecians call apotheosis, 

 and the Latins relatio inter divos, was the supreme honour 

 which man could attribute unto man: specially when it 

 was given, not by a formal decree or act of state, as it 

 was used among the Roman Emperors, but by an inward 

 assent and belief. Which honour, being so high, had 

 also a degree or middle term : for there were reckoned 

 above human honours, honours heroical and divine: in 

 the attribution and distribution of which honours we see 

 E 2 



