12B 
ILLUSTRATIONS OF 
who advocate the necessity of widely disseminating 
the fundamental truths upon which all our knowledge 
must rest ; for unfortunately, a sect, I hope every 
day becoming less numerous and powerful, has always 
been in existence, which from various motives has 
resisted every attempt to extend the boundaries 
of human knowledge ; erroneously concluding that 
the acquirement of the truths of natural science 
has an evil tendency upon the mind, by producing 
pride and conceit, and " forgetting," as Lord Bacon 
says, "that it is not any quantity of knowledge 
how great soever, that can make the mind of man to 
swell ; for nothing can fill, much less extend, the 
soul of man but God, and the contemplation of God ; 
and therefore Solomon speaking of the two principal 
senses of inquisition, the eye and the ear, affirmeth 
that the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear 
with hearing and concludeth thus : " God hath made 
all things beautiful or decent in the true return 
of their seasons : also he hath placed the world in 
man's heart, yet cannot man find out the work which 
God worketh from the beginning to the end de- 
claring, not obscurely, that God hath framed the 
mind of man as a mirror, or a glass, capable of 
the image of the universal world and joyful to receive 
the impression thereof, as the eye joyeth to receive 
light ; and not only delighted in beholding the 
variety of things and vicissitudes of times, but raised 
also to find out and discern the ordinances and 
decrees which throughout all those changes are in- 
fallibly observed. 
