[361]: Neal, History of the puritans, I, 69, 72.
[362]: Dépêche de Renard à Charles-Quint.
[363]: «Ô éloquente, juste et puissante mort! Celui que personne n'osait avertir, tu l'as persuadé. Ce que personne n'osait faire, tu l'as fait. Celui que tout le monde a flatté, toi seule tu l'as jeté hors du monde et méprisé. Ta as ramassé ensemble toute la grandeur si fort tendue, tout l'orgueil, la cruauté, l'ambition de l'homme, et couvert tout ensemble de ces deux mots étroits: Hic jacet.»
[364]: The Ecclesiastical policy, 1594. In-folio.
[365]: That which doth assign unto each thing the kinde, that which doth moderate the force and power, that which doth appoint the form and measure of working, the same we term Law....
Now, if Nature should intermit her course, and leave altogether, though it were but for a while, the observation of her own laws; if those principal and mother elements of the world, whereof all things in this lower world are made, should lose the qualities which now they have; if the forme of that heavenly arch erected over our heads should losen and dissolve itself; if celestial spheres should forget their wonted motions; if the prince of the Light of Heaven, which now as a giant doth run his unwearied course, should, as it were, through a languishing sickness, begin to stand and to rest himself.... what would become of man himself, whom these things now do all serve? See we not plainly, that obedience of Creature unto the law of Nature is the stay of the whole world?...
Between men and beasts there is no possibility of sociable communion, because the well-spring of that communion is a natural delight which man hath to transfuse from himself into others, and to receive from others into himself, specially those things wherein the excellency of this kinde doth most consist. The chiefest instrument of humane communion therefore is speech, because thereby we impart mutually one to another the conceits of our reasonable understanding. And for that cause, seeing beasts are not hereof capable, for so much as with them we can use no such conference, they being in degree, although above other creatures on earth to whom Nature has denied sense, yet lower than to be sociable companions of man to whom Nature has given reason: it is of Adam said, that among the beasts he found not for himself any meet companion. Civil society doth more content the nature of man than any private kind of solitary living, because in society this good of mutual participation is so much larger than otherwise. Herewith notwithstanding we are not satisfied, but we covet (if it might be) to have a kind of society and fellowship, even with all mankind.
[366]: For if the natural thought of man's wit may by experience and studie attain into such ripeness in the knowledge of things humane, that men in this respect may presume to build somewhat upon their judgment, what reason have we to think but that, even in matters Divine, the like wits furnished with necessary helps, exercised in Scripture with like diligence, and assisted with the grace of Almighty God, may grow into a such perfection of knowledge that men shall have just cause, when any thing pertinent unto faith and religion is doubted of, the more willingly to incline their minds toward that which the sentence of so grave, wise, and learned in that faculty shall judge most sound? (Liv. II, p. 54.)
[367]: Voyez les Dialogues de Galilée; c'est la même idée qui, en même temps, est poursuivie à Rome par l'Église et défendue en Angleterre par l'Église.
[368]: For more comfort it were for us (so small is the joy we take in these strifes) to labor under the same yoke, as men that look for the same eternal reward of their labours, to be conjoined with you in bands of indissoluble love and amity, to live as if our persons being many, our souls were but one, rather than in such dismembered sort, to spend our few and wretched days in a tedious prosecuting of wearisome contentions.