be an emulation and contention of your Majesty's virtue with your fortune; a virtuous disposition with a fortunate regiment; a virtuous expectation, when time was, of your greater fortune, with a prosperous possession thereof in the due time; a virtuous observation of the laws of marriage, with most blessed and happy fruit of marriage; a virtuous and most Christian desire of peace, with a fortunate inclination in your neighbour princes thereunto: so likewise, in these intellectual matters, there seemeth to be no less contention between the excellency of your Majesty's gifts of 10 nature, and the universality and perfection of your learning. For I am well assured that this which I shall say is no amplification at all, but a positive and measured truth; which is, that there hath not been since Christ's time any king or temporal monarch, which hath been so learned in all literature and erudition, divine and human. For let a man seriously and diligently revolve and peruse the succession of the emperors of Rome, of which Cæsar the Dictator, who lived some years before Christ, and Marcus Antoninus, were the best learned; and so descend to the emperors of Græcia, 20 or of the West; and then to the lines of France, Spain, England, Scotland, and the rest, and he shall find this judgment is truly made. For it seemeth much in a king, if, by the compendious extractions of other men's wits and labours, he can take hold of any superficial ornaments and shows of learning; or if he countenance and prefer learning and learned men but to drink indeed of the true fountains of learning, nay, to have such a fountain of learning in himself, in a king, and in a king born, is almost a miracle. And the more, because there is met in your Majesty a rare conjunction, 30 as well of divine and sacred literature, as of profane and human; so as your Majesty standeth invested of that triplicity, which in great veneration was ascribed to the ancient Hermes; the power and fortune of a king, the knowledge and illumination of a priest, and the learning and universality of a philosopher. This propriety, inherent and

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individual attribute in your Majesty, deserveth to be ex pressed not only in the fame and admiration of the presen time, nor in the history or tradition of the ages succeeding, but also in some solid work, fixed memorial, and immortal monument, bearing a character or signature both of the power of a king, and the difference and perfection of such a king.

Therefore I did conclude with myself, that I could not make unto your Majesty a better oblation than of some 10 treatise tending to that end, whereof the sum will consist of these two parts; the former, (concerning the excellency of learning and knowledge, and the excellency of the merit and true glory in the augmentation and propagation thereof the 2 f latter, what the particular acts and works are, which have been embraced and undertaken for the advancement of learning ; and again, what defects and undervalues I find in such particular acts :)to the end that though I cannot positively or affirmatively advise your Majesty, or propound unto you framed particulars, yet I may excite your princely 20 cogitations to visit the excellent treasure of your own mind, and thence to extract particulars for this purpose, agreeable to your magnanimity and wisdom.

In the entrance to the former of these, to clear the way, and as it were, to make silence, to have the true testįmonies concerning the dignity of learning to be better heard, without the interruption of tacit objections; I think good to deliver it from the discredits and disgraces which it hath received, all from ignorance; but ignorance severally disguised; appearing sometimes in the zeal and jealousy of 30 divines; sometimes in the severity and arrogancy of politicians; and sometimes in the errors and imperfections of learned men themselves.

I hear the former sort say, that knowledge is of those things which are to be accepted of with great limitation and caution; that the aspiring to overmuch knowledge was the

original temptation and sin, whereupon ensued the fall of man; that knowledge hath in it somewhat of the serpent, and therefore where it entereth into a man it makes him swell; scientia inflat: [knowledge puffeth up:] that Solomon gives a censure, That there is no end of making books, and that much reading is a weariness of the flesh; and again in another place, That in spacious knowledge there is much contristation, and that he that increaseth knowledge increaseth anxiety; that Saint Paul gives a caveat, That we be not spoiled through vain philosophy; that experience demonstrates how learned men 10 have been arch-heretics, how learned times have been inclined to atheism, and how the contemplation of second causes doth derogate from our dependence upon God, who is the first

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To discover then the ignorance and error of this opinion, and the misunderstanding in the grounds thereof, it may well appear these men do not observe or consider that it was not the pure knowledge of nature and universality, a knowledge by the light whereof man did give names unto other creatures in Paradise, as they were brought before 20 him, according unto their proprieties, which gave the occasion to the fall: but it was the proud knowledge of good and evil, with an intent in man to give law unto himself, and to depend no more upon God's commandments, which was the form of the temptation. Neither is it 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 never satisfied 30 with seeing, nor the ear with hearing; and if there be no fulness, then is the continent greater than the content: so of knowledge itself, and the mind of man, whereto the senses are but reporters, he defineth likewise in these words, placed after that calendar or ephemerides, which he maketh of the liversities of times and seasons for all actions and purposes;

and concludeth thus: God hath made all things beautiful, 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 declaring not obscurely, that God hath framed the mind of man as a mirror or 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 vicissitude of times, but 10 raised also to find out and discern the ordinances and decrees, which throughout all those changes are infallibly observed. And although he doth insinuate that the supreme or summary law of nature, which he calleth, The work which God worketh from the beginning to the end, is not possible to be found out by man; yet that doth not derogate from the capacity of the mind, but may be referred to the impediments, as of shortness of life, ill conjunction of labours, ill tradition of knowledge over from hand to hand, and many other inconveniences, whereunto the condition of 20 man is subject. For that nothing parcel of the world is denied to man's inquiry and invention, he doth in another place rule over, when he saith, The spirit of man is as the lamp of God, wherewith He searcheth the inwardness of all secrets. If then such be the capacity and receipt of the mind of man, it is manifest that there is no danger at all in the proportion or quantity of knowledge, how large soever, lest it should make it swell or out-compass itself; no, but it is merely the quality of knowledge, which, be it in quantity more or less, if it be taken without the true corrective 30 thereof, hath in it some nature of venom or, malignity, and some effects of that venom, which is ventosity or swelling. This corrective spice, the mixture whereof maketh knowledge so sovereign, is charity, which the Apostle immediately addeth to the former clause for so he saith, Knowledge bloweth up, but charity buildeth up; not unlike unto that which he delivereth in another place: If I spake, saith he, with the

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tongues of men and angels, and had not charity, it were but as a tinkling cymbal; not but that it is an excellent thing to speak with the tongues of men and angels, but because, if it be severed from charity, and not referred to the good of mjen and mankind, it hath rather a sounding and unworthy glory, than a meriting and substanial virtue. And as for that censure of Solomon, concerning the excess of writing and reading books, and the anxiety of spirit which redoundeth from knowledge; and that admonition of St. Paul, That где be not seduced by vain philosophy; let those places be 10 rightly understood, and they do indeed excellently set forth the true bounds and limitations, whereby human knowledge is confined and circumscribed; and yet without any such contracting or coarctation, but that it may comprehend all the universal nature of things; for these limitations are three: the first, That we do not so place our felicity in knowledge, as we forget our mortality: the second, That we make application of our knowledge, to give ourselves repose and contentment, and not distaste or repining: the third, That we do not presume by the contemplation of nature to attain to 20 the mysteries of God. For as touching the first of these, Solomon doth excellently expound himself in another place of the same book, where he saith: I saw well that knowledge recedeth as far from ignorance as light doth from darkness; and that the wise man's eyes keep watch in his head, whereas the fool roundeth about in darkness: but withal I learned, that the same mortality involveth them both. And for the second, certain it is, there is no vexation or anxiety of mind which resulteth from knowledge, otherwise than merely by accident; for all knowledge and wonder (which is the seed of 30 knowledge) is an impression of pleasure in itself: but when men fall to framing conclusions out of their knowledge, applying it to their particular, and ministering to themselves thereby weak fears or vast desires, there groweth that carefulness and trouble of mind which is spoken of: for then knowledge is no more Lumen siccum, [a dry light,] whereof