THE SECOND BOOK 377 



libertine passion, do still expostulate with laws and 

 moralities, as if they were opposite and malignant to 

 nature: Et quod natura remittit, invida jura negant. So said 

 Dendamis the Indian unto Alexander's messengers, That 

 he had heard somewhat of Pythagoras and some other of the 

 wise men of Graecia, and that he held them for excellent 

 men : but that they had a fault, which was that they had in 

 too great reverence and veneration a thing they called law 

 and manners. So it must be confessed that a great part of 

 the law moral is of that perfection, whereunto the light of 

 nature cannot aspire. How then is it that man is said to 

 have by the light and law of nature some notions and 

 conceits of virtue and vice, justice and wrong, good and 

 evil ? Thus ; because the light of nature is used in two 

 several senses ; the one, that which springeth from reason, 

 sense, induction, argument, according to the laws of heaven 

 and earth ; the other, that which is imprinted upon the 

 spirit of man by an inward instinct, according to the law 

 of conscience, which is a sparkle of the purity of his first 

 estate : in which later sense only he is participant of 

 some light and discerning touching the perfection of the 

 moral law: but how ? sufficient to check the vice, but not to 

 inform the duty. So then the doctrine of religion, as well 

 moral as mystical, is not to be attained but by inspiration 

 and revelation from God. 



The use notwithstanding of reason in spiritual things, 

 and the latitude thereof, is very great and general : for it is 

 not for nothing that the apostle calleth religion our reason- 

 able service of God ; insomuch as the very ceremonies and 

 figures of the old law were full of reason and signification, 

 much more than the ceremonies of idolatry and magic, that 

 are full of non-significants and surd characters. But most 

 specially the Christian Faith, as in all things so in this, 

 deserveth to be highly magnified ; holding and preserving 

 the golden mediocrity in this point between the law of 

 the Heathen and the law of Mahumet, which have em- 

 braced the two extremes. For the religion of the Heathen 

 had no constant belief or confession, but left all to the 

 liberty of argument ; and the religion of Mahumet on the 



