Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations. Various
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to God, the other, to the world. In the first we complain to God against ourselves, for our offences against Him; and confess, "Et Tu Justus es in omnibus quae venerunt super nos." "And Thou, O Lord, are just in all that hath befallen us." In the second we complain to ourselves against God: as if he had done us wrong, either in not giving us worldly goods and honors, answering our appetites: or for taking them again from us having had them; forgetting that humble and just acknowledgment of Job, "the Lord hath given, and the Lord hath taken." To the first of which St. Paul hath promised blessedness; to the second, death. And out of doubt he is either a fool, or ungrateful to God, or both, that doth not acknowledge, how mean soever his estate be, that the same is yet far greater than that which God oweth him: or doth not acknowledge, how sharp soever his afflictions be, that the same are yet far less, than those which are due unto him. And if an heathen wise man call the adversities of the world but "tributa vivendi," "the tributes of living;" a wise Christian man ought to know them, and bear them, but as the tributes of offending. He ought to bear them manlike, and resolvedly; and not as those whining soldiers do, "qui gementes sequuntur imperatorem."[20]
For seeing God, who is the author of all our tragedies, hath written out for us and appointed us all the parts we are to play: and hath not, in their distribution, been partial to the most mighty princes of the world: that gave unto Darius the part of the greatest emperor, and the part of the most miserable beggar, a beggar begging water of an enemy, to quench the great drought of death: that appointed Bajazet to play the Grand Signior of the Turks in the morning, and in the same day the footstool of Tamerlane (both which parts Valerian had also played, being taken by Sapores): that made Belisarius play the most victorious captain, and lastly the part of a blind beggar: of which examples many thousands may be produced: why should other men, who are but as the least worms, complain of wrong? Certainly there is no other account to be made of this ridiculous world, than to resolve, that the change of fortune on the great theatre, is but as the change of garments on the less. For when on the one and the other, every man wears but his own skin, the players are all alike. Now, if any man out of weakness prize the passages of this world otherwise (for saith Petrarch, "Magni ingenii est revocare mentem a sensibus"[21]) it is by reason of that unhappy phantasy of ours, which forgeth in the brains of man all the miseries (the corporal excepted) whereunto he is subject. Therein it is, that misfortunes and adversity work all that they work. For seeing Death, in the end of the play, takes from all whatsoever Fortune or Force takes from any one; it were a foolish madness in the shipwreck of worldly things, where all sinks but the sorrow, to save it. That were, as Seneca saith, "Fortunae succumbere, quod tristius est omni fato:" "To fall under Fortune, of all other the most miserable destiny."
But it is now time to sound a retreat; and to desire to be excused of this long pursuit: and withal, that the good intent, which hath moved me to draw the picture of time past (which we call History) in so large a table, may also be accepted in place of a better reason.
The examples of divine providence, everywhere found (the first divine histories being nothing else but a continuation of such examples) have persuaded me to fetch my beginning from the beginning of all things: to wit, Creation. For though these two glorious actions of the Almighty be so near, and (as it were) linked together, that the one necessarily implieth the other: Creation inferring Providence (for what father forsaketh the child that he hath begotten?) and Providence pre-supposing Creation: yet many of those that have seemed to excel in worldly wisdom, have gone about to disjoin this coherence; the epicure denying both Creation and Providence, but granting the world had a beginning; the Aristotelian granting Providence, but denying both the creation and the beginning.
Now although this doctrine of faith, touching the creation in time (for by faith we understand, that the world was made by the word of God), be too weighty a work for Aristotle's rotten ground to bear up, upon which he hath (notwithstanding) founded the defences and fortresses of all his verbal doctrine: yet that the necessity of infinite power, and the world's beginning, and the impossibility of the contrary even in the judgment of natural reason, wherein he believed, had not better informed him; it is greatly to be marvelled at. And it is no less strange, that those men which are desirous of knowledge (seeing Aristotle hath failed in this main point; and taught little other than terms in the rest) have so retrenched their minds from the following and overtaking of truth, and so absolutely subjected themselves to the law of those philosophical principles; as all contrary kind of teaching, in the search of causes, they have condemned either for phantastical, or curious. Both doth it follow, that the positions of heathen philosophers are undoubted grounds and principles indeed, because so called? Or that ipsi dixerunt, doth make them to be such? Certainly no. But this is true, that where natural reason hath built anything so strong against itself, as the same reason can hardly assail it, much less batter it down: the same in every question of nature, and infinite power, may be approved for a fundamental law of human knowledge. For saith Charron in his book of wisdom, "Toute proposition humaine a autant d'authorite quel'autre, si la raison n'on fait la difference;" "Every human proposition hath equal authority, if reason make not the difference," the rest being but the fables of principles. But hereof how shall the upright and impartial judgment of man give a sentence, where opposition and examination are not admitted to give in evidence? And to this purpose it was well said of Lactantius, "Sapientiam sibi adimunt, qui sine ullo judicio inventa maiorum probant, et ab aliis pecudum more ducuntur:" "They neglect their own wisdom, who without any judgment approve the invention of those that forewent them; and suffer themselves after the manner of beasts, to be led by them;" by the advantage of which sloth and dullness, ignorance is now become so powerful a tyrant, as it hath set true philosophy, physics, and divinity in a pillory; and written over the first, "Contra negantem principia;"[22] over the second, "Virtus specifica;"[23] over the third, "Ecclesta Romana."[24]
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