the Franciscan opponent replied no more but that it was a new and no authentick interpretation.

XXIII. These are but the conclusions and fallible discourses of man upon the word of God, for such I do believe the Holy Scriptures; yet were it of man, I could not choose but say it was the singularest, and superlative piece that hath been extant since the creation; were I a pagan I should not refrain the lecture of it; and cannot but commend the judgment of Ptolemy, that thought not his library complete without it. The Alcoran of the Turks (I speak without prejudice) is an illcomposed piece, containing in it vain and ridiculous errours in philosophy, impossibilities, fictions, and vanities beyond laughter, maintained by evident and open sophisms, the policy of ignorance, deposition of universities, and banishment of learning, that hath gotten foot by arms and violence; this without a blow hath disseminated itself through the whole earth. It is not unremarkable what Philo first observed, that the law of Moses continued two thousand years without the least alteration; whereas we see the laws of other commonweals do alter with occasions; and even those that pretended their original from some divinity, to

have vanished without trace or memory. I believe besides Zoroaster there were divers that writ before Moses, who notwithstanding have suffered the common fate of time. Men's works have an age like themselves, and though they outlive their authors yet have they a stint and period to their duration; this only is a work too hard for the teeth of time, and cannot perish but in the general flames when all things shall confess their ashes.

XXIV. I have heard some with deep sighs lament the lost lines of Cicero; others with as many groans deplore the combustion of the library of Alexandria; for my own part, I think there be too many in the world, and could with patience behold the urn and ashes of the Vatican, could I with a few others recover the perished leaves of Solomon. I would not omit a copy of Enoch's pillars, had they many nearer authors than Josephus, or did not relish somewhat of the fable. Some men have written more than others have spoken; Pineda quotes more authors in one work than are necessary in a whole world.* Of those three great inventions in Germany there are two which are

*Pineda, in his Monarchia Ecclesiastica quotes one thousand and forty authors.

not without their incommodities, and 'tis disputable whether they exceed not their use and commodities. "Tis not a melancholy utinam of mine own, but the desires of better heads, that there were a general synod; not to unite the incompatible difference of religion, but for the benefit of learning; to reduce it as it lay at first in a few and solid authors, and to condemn to the fire those swarms and millions of rhapsodies begotten only to distract and abuse the weaker judgments of scholars, and to maintain the trade and mystery of typographers.

XXV. I cannot but wonder with what exceptions the Samaritans could confine their belief to the Pentateuch, or five books of Moses. I am ashamed at the rabbinical interpretation of the Jews upon the Old Testament, as much as their defection from the New. And truly it is beyond wonder how that contemptible and degenerate issue of Jacob, once so devoted to ethnick superstition and so easily seduced to the idolatry of their neighbours, should now in such an obstinate and peremptory belief adhere unto their own doctrine, expect impossibilities, and in the face and eye of the church persist without the least hope of conversion; this is a vice in them that were a virtue

in us; for obstinacy in a bad cause is but constancy in a good. And herein I must accuse those of my own religion; for there is not any of such a fugitive faith, such an unstable belief, as a Christian; none that do so oft transform themselves, not unto several shapes of Christianity and of the same species, but unto more unnatural and contrary forms, of Jew and Mahometan; that from the name of Saviour can condescend to the bare term of prophet; and from an old belief that he is come, fall to a new expectation of his coming. It is the promise of Christ to make us all one flock; but how and when this union shall be, is as obscure to me as the last day. Of those four members of religion we hold a slender proportion; there are, I confess, some new additions, yet small to those which accrue to our adversaries, and those only drawn from the revolt of pagans, men but of negative impieties, and such as deny Christ but because they never heard of him; but the religion of the Jew is expressly against the Christian, and the Mahometan against both. For the Turk, in the bulk he now stands, he is beyond all hope of conversion; if he fall asunder there may be conceived hopes, but not without strong improbabilities. The Jew

is obstinate in all fortunes; the persecution of fifteen hundred years hath but confirmed them in their errour; they have already endured whatsoever may be inflicted, and have suffered, in a bad cause, even to the condemnation of their enemies. Persecution is a bad and indirect way to plant religion; it hath been the unhappy method of angry devotions, not only to confirm honest religion, but wicked heresies and extravagant opinions. It was the first stone and basis of our faith; none can more justly boast of persecutions, and glory in the number and valour of martyrs; for, to speak properly, those are true and almost only examples of fortitude; those that are fetcht from the field, or drawn from the actions of the camp, are not oft-times so truly precedents of valour as audacity, and at the best attain but to some bastard piece of fortitude. If we shall strictly examine the circumstances and requisites which Aristotle requires to true and perfect valour, we shall find the name only in his master Alexander, and as little in that Roman worthy Julius Cæsar; and if any in that easy and active way have done so nobly as to deserve that name, yet in the passive and more terrible piece these have surpassed, and in a more heroical way