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THE SECOND BOOKE 245
dy, and were new borne at divers seasons, and that the
worlds were infinite in number. Anaximenes deemed
the ayre to be a God, which was created immense
and always moving. Anaxagoras was the first that
held the description and manner of all things to be
directed by the power and reason of a spirit infinit.
Alcmaaon hath ascribed divinity unto the Sunne, unto
the Moone, unto Stars, and unto the Soule. Pythagoras
hath made God a spirit dispersed through the Nature
of all things, whence our soules are derived. Parmenides,
a circle circumpassing the heavens, and by
the heat of light maintaining the world. Empedocles
said the four Natures, whereof all things are made, to
be Gods. Protagoras, that he had nothing to say
whether they were or were not, or what they were.
Democritus would sometimes say that the images and
their circuitions were Gods, and othertimes this Nature,
which disperseth these images, and then our knowledge
and intelligence. Plato scattereth his beliefe after
diverse semblances. In his Timaeus he saith that the
worlds father could not be named. In his Lawes that
his being must not be enquired after. And else-where
in the said bookes he maketh the world, the heaven,
the starres, the earth, and our soules, to be Gods; and
besides, admitteth those that by ancient institutions
have beene received in every common-wealth, Xenophon
reporteth a like difference of Socrates his discipline.
Sometimes that Gods forme ought not to be
inquired after; then he makes him infer that the Sunne
is a God, and the Soule a God ; othertimes that there
is but one, and then more. Speusippus, Nephew unto
Plato, makes God to be a certaine power, governing all
things, and having a soule. Aristotle saith sometimes
that it is the spirit, and sometimes the world; othertimes
he appoynteth another ruler over this world, and
sometimes he makes God to be the heat of heaven.
Xenocrates makes eight; five named amongst the
planets, the sixth composed of all the fixed starres,
as of his owne members ; the seaventh and eighth the
Sunne and the Moone. Heraclides Ponticus doth but