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temn us: while we have these delights we cannot envy them: we cannot wish ourselves other than we are. Besides, the way to all other contentments is troublesome: the only recompense is in the end. To delve in the mines, to scorch in the fire for the getting, for the fining of gold, is a slavish toyle: the comfort is in the wedge to the owner, not the labourers: where our very search of knowledge is delightsome. Study itself is our life: from which we would not be barred for a world. How much sweeter then is the fruit of study, the conscience of knowledge! In comparison whereof the soul that hath once tasted it easily contemns all human comforts. Go now, ye worldlings, and insult over our paleness, our neediness, our neglect, ye could not be so jocund if ye were not ignorant; if you did not want knowledge you could not overlook him that hath it: for me, I am so far from emulating you, that I profess I had as lieve be a brute beast, as an ignorant rich mana.

a Bishop Hall.

16. In my solitary and retired imagination, I remember I am not alone, and therefore forget not to contemplate him and his attributes who is ever with me, especially those two mighty ones, his wisdom and eternity: with the one I recreate, with the other I confound my understanding: for who can speak of eternity without a solœcism, or think thereof without an ecstasie?

That other attribute wherewith I recreate my devotion, is his wisdom, in which I am happy; and for the contemplation of this only, do not repent me that I was bred in the way of study: The ad, vantage I have of the vulgar, with the content and happiness I conceive therein, is an ample recompense for all my endeavours, in what part of knowledge soever. Wisdom is his most beauteous attribute; no man can attain unto it, yet Solomon pleased God when he desired it. He is wise, because he knows all things; and he knoweth all things, because he made them all: but his greatest

a See note B at the end.

knowledge is in comprehending that he made not, that is, himself. And this is also the greatest knowledge in man. But these are contemplations metaphysical: my humble speculations have another method, and are content to trace and discover those expressions he hath left in his creatures, and the obvious effects of nature: there is no danger to profound these mysteries, no sanctum sanctorum in philosophy: the world was made to be inhabited by beasts, but studied and contemplated by man: 'tis the debt of our reason we owe unto God, and the homage we pay for not being beasts; without this, the world is still as though it had not been, or as it was before the sixth day, when as yet there was not a creature that could conceive, or say there was a world. The wisdom of God receives small honour from those vulgar heads that rudely stare about, and with a gross rusticity admire his works; those highly magnifie him, whose judicious inquiry into

a Man is placed in this stage of the world, to view the several natures and actions of the creature not idly as they view us.

his acts, and deliberate research into his creatures, return the duty of a devout and learned admirationa.

17. Wisdom reacheth from one end to another, mightily and sweetly doth she order all things. I loved her and sought her out from my youth: I desired to make her my spouse; and I was a lover of her beauty, for she is privy to the mysteries of the knowledge of God, and a lover of his works. If a man love righteousness, her labours are virtues, for she teacheth temperance and prudence, justice and fortitude, which are such things as men can have

a Sir Thomas Brown; of whose writings it has been said, "I wonder and admire his entireness in every subject that is before him. He follows it, he never wanders from it; and he has no occasion to wander, for whatever happens to be the subject he metamorphoses all nature into it. In that treatise on some urns dug up in Norfolk, how earthy, how redolent of graves and sepulchres, is every line! You have now dark mold, now a thigh bone, now a skull, then a bit of a mouldered coffin, a fragment of an old tomb-stone with moss in its Hic jacet, a ghost or a winding sheet, or the echo of a funeral psalm wafted on a November wind; and the gayest thing you shall meet with shall be a silver nail or a gilt Anno Domini, from a perished coffin top."-C. L.

nothing more profitable in their life. If a man desire much experience, she knoweth things of old, and conjectureth aright what is to come: she knoweth the subtleties of speeches and can expound dark sentences; she foreseeth signs and wonders and the events of seasons and times. Therefore I purposed to take her to me to live with me, knowing she would be a counsellor of good things and a comfort in cares and grief. After I am come into my house I will repose myself with her: for her conversation hath no bitterness, and to live with her hath no sorrow, but mirth and joy. Nevertheless when I perceived that I could not otherwise obtain her except God gave her me, (and that was a point of wisdom also to know whose gift she was,) I prayed unto the Lord and besought him, and with whole heart I said, "Oh God of my my

“fathers, and Lord of mercy, who hast made all

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things with thy word, and ordained man through

thy wisdom, that he should have dominion over the "creatures which thou hast made, and order the

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