ll the mysteries of providence, they made them
rather the object of their wonder, than their curiosity; and therefore
were not so presumptuous as to dive into the depths of nature, to labour
for the solving all phenomena in astronomy, or to wrack their brains
in the splitting of entities, and unfolding the nicest speculations,
judging it a crime for any man to aim at what is put beyond the reach of
his shallow apprehension.

[Illustration: 147]

Thus was ignorance, in the infancy of the world, as much the parent of
happiness as it has been since of devotion: but as soon as the golden
age began by degrees to degenerate into more drossy metals, then were
arts likewise invented; yet at first but few in number, and those rarely
understood, till in farther process of time the superstition of
the Chaldeans, and the curiosity of the Grecians, spawned so many
subtleties, that now it is scarce the work of an age to be thoroughly
acquainted with all the criticisms in grammar only. And among all the
several Arts, those are proportionably most esteemed that come nearest
to weakness and folly. For thus divines may bite their nails, and
naturalists may blow their fingers, astrologers may know their own
fortune is to be poor, and the logician may shut his fist and grasp the
wind.

While all these hard-named fellows cannot make
So great a figure as a single quack.

And in this profession, those that have most confidence, though the
least skill, shall be sure of the greatest custom; and indeed this whole
art as it is now practised, is but one incorporated compound of craft
and imposture.

Next to the physician comes (he, who perhaps will commence a suit with
me for not being placed before him, I mean) the lawyer, who is so silly
as to be _ignoramus_ to a proverb, and yet by such are all difficulties
resolved, all controversies determined, and all affairs managed so much
to their own advantage, that they get those estates to themselves which
they are employed to recover for their clients: while the poor divine
in the mean time shall have the lice crawl upon his thread-bare gown,
before, by all his sweat and drudgery, he can get money enough to
purchase a new one. As those arts therefore are most advantageous to
their respective professors which are farthest distant from wisdom, so
are those persons incomparably most happy that have least to do with
any at all, but jog on in the common road of nature, which will never
mis