352 



A DISCOURSE 



BOOK IV. What this prince of the air did to Job and his religious family, for the 

 '^^^'^'"^^ trial of his patience, by God's permission, the Scripture tells us ; and for 

 what cause he still suffers that malicious spirit to exert his fury in these 

 lower regions, the same God only knows ; though certainly for our 

 chastisement ; and therefore, reformation, submission, and patience, 

 wiU become our best security. 



Scaliger the father affirms, he could never convince his learned anta- 

 gonist Erasmus, but that trees feel the first stroke of the axe, and discover 

 a certain resentment ; and indeed they seem to hold the edge of the fatal 

 tool, till a wider gap be made : and so exceedingly apprehensive they are 

 of their destruction, that, as Zoroaster says, if a man come with a sharp 

 bill, intending to fell a harren tree, and a friend importunately depre- 

 cate the angry person, and prevail with him to spare it, the tree wiU in- 

 falUbly bear plentifully the next year. Such is the superstitious sanc- 

 tity and folly of some credulous people. 



We might here, indeed, produce the wonderful strange apparitions of 

 spirits interceding for the standing and life of trees, when the axe has 

 been ready for execution, as you may see in the hymn of Callimachus 

 to Apollo, Pausanias, and the famous story of Parsebius, related by 

 Apollonius in 2. Argonaut, with the fearful catastrophe of such as cause- 

 lessly and wantonly violated those goodly plantations ; (from which 

 fables arose that of the Dodonean and vocal forests, frequent in heathen 

 writers ;) but none so elegantly as in that tale by the witty Ovid, de- 

 scribing the fact of the wicked Erisichthon : 



As fame reports^ his hand an axe sustain'd. 



Which Ceres' consecrated grove profan'd ; 



Which durst the venerable gloom invade. 



And violate with light the awful shade. 



An ancient Oak in the dark centre stood. 



The covert's glory, and itself a wood : 



Garlands embrac'd its shaft, and from the boughs. 



Hung tablets, monuments of prosp'rous vows. 



In the cool dusk its unpierc'd verdure spread. 



The Dryads oft their hallow'd dances led ; 



And oft, when round their gauging arms they cast. 



Full fifteen ells it measur'd in the waist : 



Its height all under standards did surpass. 



As they aspir'd above the humbler grass. 



