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THE SECOND BOOKE 261
Who knowes if thus to live, be called death,
And if it be to dye, thus to draw breath;
And not without apparance. For wherefore doe we
from that instant take a title of being, which is but a
twinkling in the infinit course of an eternall night, and
so short an interruption of our perpetuall and naturall
condition ? Death possessing what ever is before and
behind this moment, and also a good part of this
moment. Someothers affirme there is no motion, and
that nothing stirreth; namely, those which follow
Melissus. For if there be but one, neither can this
sphericall motion serve him, nor the moving from one
place to another, as Plato proveth, that there is neither
generation nor corruption in nature. Protagoras saith
there is nothing in Nature but doubt: that a man may
equally dispute of all things : and of that also, whether
all things may equally be disputed of: Nausiphanes
said, that of things which seeme to be, no one thing is
no more than it is not. That nothing is certaine but
uncertainty. Parmenides, that of that which seemeth
there is no one thing in generall. That there is but
one Zeno, that one selfe same is not: and that there is
nothing. If one were, he should either be in another,
or in himselfe : if he be in another, then are they two :
if he be in himselfe, they are also two, the comprizing
and the comprized. According to these rules or doctrines,
the Nature of things is but a false or vaine
shadow. I have ever thought this manner of speech
in a Christian is full of indiscretion and irreverence;
God cannot dye, God cannot gaine-say himselfe, God
cannot doe this or that. I cannot allow a man should
so bound Gods heavenly power under the Lawes of our
word. And that apparence, which in these propositions
offers it selfe unto us, ought to be represented more
reverently and more religiously. Our speech hath his
infirmities and defects, as all things else have. Most
1 PLAT. Gorg. ex EURIP.