To the ignorance of this, all the fierce contentions between the Puritans and the Episcopalians under Elizabeth and the Stuarts, all the errors and exorbitant pretensions of the Church of Scotland, and the heats and antipathies of our present Dissenters, may be demonstrably traced.
Ib.
9. p. 183.
Pythagoras, by bringing up his scholars in the speculative knowledge of numbers, made their conceits therein so strong, that when they came to the contemplation of things natural, they imagined that in every particular thing they even beheld as it were with their eyes, how the elements of number gave essence and being to the works of nature: a thing in reason impossible; which notwithstanding, through their mis-fashioned pre-conceit, appeared unto them no less certain, than if nature had written it in the very foreheads of all the creatures of God.
I am not so conversant with the volumes of Duns Scotus as to be able to pronounce positively whether he is an exception, but I can think of no other instance of high metaphysical genius in an Englishman. Judgment, solid sense, invention in specialties, fortunate anticipations and instructive foretact of truth, — in these we can shew giants. It is evident from this example from the Pythagorean school that not even our incomparable Hooker could raise himself to the idea, so rich in truth, which is contained in the words
numero, pondere, et mensura generantur cœli et terra.
, that Hooker had ever asked himself concerning will, absolute will,
,
numerus omues numeros ponens, nunquam positus![4]