The First Book 5 



ing unto their proprieties, which gave the occasion to the 

 fall : but it was the proud knowledge of good and evil, with 

 an intent in man to give law unto himself, and to depend no 

 more upon God's commandments, which was the form of 

 the temptation. Neither is it any quantity of knowledge, 

 how great soever, that can make the mind of man to swell ; 

 for nothing can fill, much less extend the soul of man, but 

 God and the contemplation of God ; and therefore Salomon, 

 speaking of the two principal senses of inquisition, the eye 

 and the ear, afiirmeth that the eye is never satisfied with 

 seeing, nor the ear with hearing ; ^ and if there be no fulness, 

 then is the continent greater than the content : so of know- 

 ledge itself, and the mind of man, whereto the senses are but 

 reporters, he defineth likewise in these words, placed after 

 that Kalendar or Ephemerides, which he maketh of the 

 diversities of times and seasons for all actions and purposes; 

 and concludeth thus : God hath made all things beautiful, or 

 decent, in the true return of their seasons : Also he hath placed 

 the world in man's heart, yet cannot man find out the work 

 which God worketh from the beginning to the end : ^ declaring 

 not obscurely, that God hath framed the mind of man as a 

 mirror or glass, capable of the image of the universal world, 

 and joyful to receive the impression thereof, as the eye 

 joyeth to receive light ; and not only delighted in beholding 

 the variety of things and vicissitude of times, but raised also 

 to find out and discern the ordinances and decrees, which 

 throughout all those changes are infallibly observed. And 

 although he doth insinuate that the supreme or summary 

 law of nature, which he calleth the work which God worketh 

 from the beginning to the end, is not possible to be found out 

 by man; yet that doth not derogate from the capacity of 

 the mind, but may be referred to the impediments, as of 

 shortness of life, ill conjunction of labours, ill tradition of 

 knowledge over from hand to hand, and many other incon- 

 veniences, whereunto the condition of man is subject. For 

 that nothing parcel of the world is denied to man's inquiry 

 and invention, he doth in another place rule over, when he 

 saith. The spirit of man is as the lamj) of God^ wherewith h e 

 searcheth the inwardness of all secrets ^ If then such be the 

 capacity and receipt of the mind of man, it is manifest that 

 there is no danger at all in the proportion^i2r_ciuantity of 

 * Eccl. i. 8. » Eccl. iii. it. ( • Prov. xx. 27.y 



