THE FIRST BOOK 209 



embrace the variety of them. First therefore, in the 

 degrees of human honour amongst the heathen it was the 

 highest, to obtain to a veneration and adoration as a God. 

 This unto the Christians is as the forbidden fruit. But we 

 speak now separately of human testimony : according to 

 which that which the Grecians call apotheosis^ and the 

 Latins relatio inter divos, was the supreme honour which 

 man could attribute unto man; specially when it was given, 

 not by a formal decree or act of state, as it was used 

 among the Roman emperors, but by an inward assent and 

 belief; which honour being so high, had also a degree or 

 middle term; for there were reckoned above human 

 honours, honours heroical and divine ; in the attribution 

 and distribution of which honours we see antiquity made 

 this difference : that whereas founders and uniters of 

 states and cities, lawgivers, extirpers of tyrants, fathers 

 of the people, and other eminent persons in civil merit, 

 were honoured but with the titles of worthies or demi- 

 gods ; such as were Hercules, Theseus, Minos, Romulus, 

 and the like ; on the other side, such as were inventors and 

 authors of new arts, endowments, and commodities towards 

 man's life, were ever consecrated amongst the gods them- 

 selves; as was Ceres, Bacchus, Mercurius, Apollo, and 

 others ; and justly; for the merit of the former is confined 

 within the circle of an age or a nation ; and is like fruitful 

 showers, which though they be profitable and good, yet 

 serve but for that season, and for a latitude of ground 

 where they fall ; but the other is indeed like the benefits 

 of heaven, which are permanent and universal. The 

 former again is mixed with strife and perturbation ; but 

 the later hath the true character of divine presence, coming 

 in aura leni, without noise or agitation. 



Neither is certainly that other merit of learning, in re- 

 pressing the inconveniencies which grow from man to man, 

 much inferior to the former, of relieving the necessities 

 which arise from nature ; which merit was lively set forth 

 by the ancients in that feigned relation of Orpheus' theatre; 

 where all beasts and birds assembled, and forgetting their 

 several appetites, some of prey, some of game, some of 



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