40 The Advancement of Learning 



maketh no claim to any of those glories, but only to the 

 glory of inquisition of truth; for so he saith expressly, The 

 glory of God is to conceal a thing, hut the glory of the king is to 

 find it out ; ^ as if, according to the innocent play of children, 

 the Divine Majesty took dehght to hide His works, to the 

 end to have them found out ; and as if kings could not obtain 

 a greater honour than to be God's playfellows in that game ; 

 considering the great commandment of wits and means, 



^^whereby nothing needeth to be hidden from them. 



(^ Neither did the dispensation of God vary in the times 

 after our Saviour came into the world; for our Saviour 

 Himself did first show His power to subdue ignorance, by 

 His conference with the priests and doctors 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 vehicula scienticB. 



13. So in the election of those instnmients, which it pleased 

 God to use for the plantation of the Faith, notwithstanding 

 that at the first He did employ persons altogether unlear ned, 

 o therwise than by inspiration , more evidently to declare 

 His immediate working, and to abase all human wisdom or 

 knowledge; yet, nevertheless, 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 St. Paul, who was the only learned amongst the Apostles, 

 had his pen most used in the Scriptures of the New Testa- 

 ment. 



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 unto 

 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 



* Prov. XXV. 2. * Luke ii. 46. • Act. Ap. ii. i. 



* Gibbon, vol. ii. c. 23, who quotes Ammian. xxv. 5. 



* Gibbon, vol. iv. c. 45. The story that St. Gregory destroyed 



