Product Synopsis

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1851 Excerpt: ...To this end we see how quickly sundry arts mechanical were found out in the very prime of the world.3 As things of greatest necessity are always first provided for, so things of greatest dignity are most accounted of hy all such as judge rightly. Although therefore riches be a thing which every man wisheth; yet no man of judgment can esteem it better to be rich, than wise, virtuous, and religious. If we be both or either of these, it is not because we are so born. For into the world we came as empty of the one as of the other, as naked in mind as we are in body. Both which necessities of man had at the first no other help and supplies, than only domestical; such as that which the prophet implieth, saying, ' Can a mother forget her childP4 Such as that which the apostle mentioneth, saying, 'He that careth not for his own is worse than an infidel;'5 such as that concerning Abraham, ' Abraham will command his sons and his household after him, that they keep the way of the Lord.'6 But neither that which we learned of ourselves, nor that which others teach us can prevail, where wickedness and malice have taken deep root. If therefore when there was but as yet one only family in the world, no means of instruction human or divine, could prevent effusion of blood:7 how could it be chosen but that when families were multiplied and increased upon earth, after separation each providing for itself, envy, strife, contention, and violence, must grow amongst themP For hath not nature furnished man with wit and valour, and as it were with armour, which may be used as well unto extreme evil as goodP yea, were they not used by the rest of the world unto evilP unto the 50 Wickedness of Mankind made Government necessary. contrary only by Seth, Enoch, and those few the rest in ...