THE FIRST BOOK 207 



his conference with the priests and doctors of the law, 

 before he shewed 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 scientiae. 



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 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 only learned amongst the apostles, had 

 his pen most used in the scriptures of the New Testament. 



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 

 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 extinguish 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. 



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

 and our fathers, when it pleased God to call the Church of 

 Rome to account for their degenerate manners and cere- 



