IO8 OF THE ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING. [V. 3. 



rhetoric of deceiving expectation ? Is not the delight of 

 the quavering upon a stop in music the same with the 

 playing of light upon the water ? 



Splendet tremulo sub lumine pontus. 



Are 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 

 Philosophic ar g um ent, will now and then draw a bucket 



prima. sive c r . . 



de fontibus water out of this well for their present 



scientiarnm. use : but tne spring-head thereof seemeth to 

 me not to have been visited; being of so 

 excellent use both for the disclosing of nature and the 

 abridgement of art. 



VI. i. This science being therefore first placed as a 

 common parent like unto Berecynthia, which had so 

 much heavenly issue, omnes ccelicolas, omnes supera alta 

 tenentes ; we may return to the former distribution of the 

 three philosophies, divine, natural, and human. And as 

 concerning divine philosophy or natural theology, it is 

 that knowledge or rudiment of knowledge concerning 

 God, which may be obtained by the contemplation of 

 his creatures; which knowledge may be truly termed 

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

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

 sufiiceth to convince atheism, but not to inform religion : 

 and therefore there was never miracle wrought by God 

 to convert an atheist, because the light of nature might 



