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mind was to know what it knew not. My know- 

 ledge did rather enlarge my desire of knowing than 

 satisfy me. The most intemperate sensual appetite, 

 was more capable of being satisfied by what it en- 

 joyed, than my intellectual appetite was, of being sa- 

 tisfied with the things T knew. The enlarging my 

 undersanding with knowledge, did but enlarge, the 

 desire I had to know. So that the answer which was 

 returned to Job, upon his inquisition after wisdom : 

 The depth saith, it is not in me; and the sea saith^ 

 it is not in me. The same account, all my several 

 kinds of knowledge gave, when I enquired for satis, 

 faction in them. My metaphysics* when I had peru- 

 sed great volumes of it, was so mercurial, I could 

 hardly hold it; and yet so endless, that, the more I 

 read, pr thought of it, the more I might. Natural 

 philosophy, almost in every branch, was fall of uncer- 

 tainty. Much of it was grounded on suppositions 

 impossible to be experimented. The latter philoso- 

 phers censured the former, and departed from them. 

 Tiie latest despised and rejected both,, as equally ig- 

 norant. The subject to be treated of, was as vast 

 as the visible or tangible universe. And yet every 

 pdividual thing was so complicated, that if all the 

 rest were omitted, this alone had more lines coucen.. 

 tered in it, than any oiie age could sift to the bot- 

 tom. Yet any one lost, or Rot exactly scanned, left 

 all the rest precarious and uncertain. And what 

 could we expect to know, while we know not our- 

 selves, not even our own bodies 1 Yet none could 



