ut to disjoin this coherence; the epicure
denying both Creation and Providence, but granting the world had a
beginning; the Aristotelian granting Providence, but denying both the
creation and the beginning.

Now although this doctrine of faith, touching the creation in time
(for by faith we understand, that the world was made by the word of
God), be too weighty a work for Aristotle's rotten ground to bear
up, upon which he hath (notwithstanding) founded the defences and
fortresses of all his verbal doctrine: yet that the necessity of
infinite power, and the world's beginning, and the impossibility
of the contrary even in the judgment of natural reason, wherein he
believed, had not better informed him; it is greatly to be marvelled
at. And it is no less strange, that those men which are desirous of
knowledge (seeing Aristotle hath failed in this main point; and taught
little other than terms in the rest) have so retrenched their
minds from the following and overtaking of truth, and so absolutely
subjected themselves to the law of those philosophical principles;
as all contrary kind of teaching, in the search of causes, they have
condemned either for phantastical, or curious. Both doth it follow,
that the positions of heathen philosophers are undoubted grounds and
principles indeed, because so called? Or that _ipsi dixerunt_, doth
make them to be such? Certainly no. But this is true, that where
natural reason hath built anything so strong against itself, as the
same reason can hardly assail it, much less batter it down: the same
in every question of nature, and infinite power, may be approved for
a fundamental law of human knowledge. For saith Charron in his book of
wisdom, "Toute proposition humaine a autant d'authorite quel'autre,
si la raison n'on fait la difference;" "Every human proposition hath
equal authority, if reason make not the difference," the rest being
but the fables of principles. But hereof how shall the upright and
impartial judgment of man give a sentence, where opposition and
examination are not admitted to give in evidence? And to this purpose
it was well said of Lactantius, "Sapientiam sibi adimunt, qui sine
ullo judicio inventa maiorum probant, et ab aliis pecudum more
ducuntur:" "They neglect their own wisdom, who without any judgment
approve the invention of those that forewent them; and suffer
themselves after the manner of beasts, to be led by them;" by the
advantage of which sloth and dullness