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THE SECOND BOOKE 243
Heathen histories acknowledge dignitie, order, justice,
prodigies, and oracles, employed for their benefit and
instruction in their fabulous religion : God of his
mercy daining, peradventure, to foster by his temporal!
blessings the budding and tender beginnings of
such a brute knowledge as naturall reason gave them
of him, athwart the false images of their deluding
dreames: Not only false but impious and injurious
are those which man hath forged and devised by his
owne invention. And of al religions Saint Paul found
in credit at Athens, that which they had consecrated
unto a certaine hidden and unknowne divinitie seemed
to be most excusable. Pythagoras shadowed the truth
somewhat necrer, judgeing that the knowledge of this
first cause and Ensentium must be undefined, without
any prescription or declaration. That it was nothing
else but the extreme indevour of our imagination
toward perfection, every one amplifying the idea
thereof according to his capacitie. But if Numa
undertooke to conforme the devotion of his people
to this project, to joyne the same to a religion meerely
mentall, without any prefixt object or materiall mixture,
he undertooke a matter to no use. Mans minde could
never be maintained if it were still floting up and
downe in this infinite deepe of shapeles conceits.
They must be framed unto her to some image, according
to her model. The majesty of God hath in some sort
suffered itself to be circumscribed to corporall limits:
His supernaturall and celestiall Sacraments beare
signes of our terrestriall condition. His adoration is
exprest by offices and sensible words; for it is man
that belecveth and praieth. I omit other arguments
that are employed about this subject. But I could
hardly be made beleeve that the sight of our Crucifixes
and pictures of that pittiful torment, that the ornaments
and ceremonious motions in our Churches, that
the voyces accomodated and suted to our thoughtsdevotions,
and this stirring of our senses, doth not
greatly inflame the peoples soules with a religious
passion of wonderous beneficiall good. Of those to