THE FIRST BOOK 45 



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 vehicvia scientiae. 



13. So in the election of those instruments, which it 

 pleased God to use for the plantation of the faith, 

 notwithstanding 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 never- 

 theless 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. 



14. 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 rnito Christians to be admitted into schools, 

 lectures, or exercises of learning) was esteemed and 

 accounted 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 

 devotion ; but contrariwise received the censure of 

 humour, malignity and pusillanimity, even amongst 

 holy men ; in that he designed to obliterate and ex- 

 tinguish the memory of heathen antiquity and authors. 

 But contrariwise it was the Christian church, which, 

 amidst the inundations of the Scythians on the one 

 side from the north-west, and the Saracens from the 

 east, did preserve in the sacred lap and bosom thereof 

 the precious relics even of heathen learning, which 

 otherwise had been extinguished as if no such thing 

 had ever been. 



15. And we see before our eyes, that in the age of 



