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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.
(14) 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 this 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.
(15) 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 ceremonies, and sundry
doctrines obnoxious and framed to uphold the same abuses; at one and
the same time it was ordained by the Divine Providence that there
should attend withal a renovation and new spring of all other
knowledges. And on the other side we see the Jesuits, who partly in
themselves, and partly by the emulation and provocation of their
example, have much quickened and strengthened the state of learning;
we see (I say) what notable service and reparation they have done to
the Roman see.
(16) Wherefore, to conclude this part, let it be observed, that
there be two principal duties and services, besides ornament and
illustration, which philosophy and human learning do perform to
faith and religion. The one, because they are an effectual
inducement to the exaltation of the glory of God. For as the Psalms
and other Scriptures do often invite us to consider and magnify the
great and wonderful works of God, so if we should rest only in the
contemplation of the exterior of them as they first offer themselves
to our senses, we should do a like injury unto the majesty of God,
as if we should judge or construe of the store of some excellent
jeweller by that only which is set out toward the street in his
shop. The other, because they minister a singular help and
preservative against unbelief and error. For our Saviour saith,
"You err, not knowing the Scriptures, nor the power of God;" laying
before us two books or volumes to study, if we will be secured from
error: first the Scriptures, revealing the will of God, and then
the creatures expressing His power; whereof the latter is a key unto
the former: not only opening our understanding to conceive the true
sense of the Scriptures by the general notions of reason and rules
of speech, but chiefly opening our belief, in drawing us into a due
meditation of the omnipotency of God, which is chiefly signed and
engraven upon His works. Thus much therefore for divine testimony
and evidence concerning the true dignity and value of learning.
VII. (1) As for human proofs, it is so large a field, as in a
discourse of this nature and brevity it is fit rather to use choice
of those things which we shall produce, than to 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, [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]