and of policy: it is a matter that makes neither to wonder at nor to doubt of it.
For they all lived in the same newness of time, which we call "old Time;" and had all the same want of his instruction, which (after the Creator of all things) hath by degrees taught all mankind. For other teaching had they none, that were removed far off from the Hebrews (who inherited the knowledge of the first patriarchs) than that from variable effects they began by time and degrees, to find out the causes: from whence came Natural Philosophy; as the Moral did from disorder and confusion, and the Law from cruelty and oppression.
But it is certain that the Age of Time hath brought forth stranger and more incredible things than the Infancy. For we have now greater giants for vice and injustice; than the world had in those days for bodily strength. For cottages and houses of clay and timber; we have raised palaces of stones: we carve them, we paint them, and adorn them with gold; insomuch as men are rather known by their houses, than their houses by them. We are fallen from two dishes to two hundred; from water, to wine and drunkenness; from the covering of our bodies with the skins of beasts, not only to silk and gold, but to the very skins of men.
But to conclude this digression, Time will also take revenge of the excess which it hath brought forth. Quam longa dies pepcrit, longiorque anxit, longissima sitbrnet. "Long time brought forth, longer time increased it, and a time longer than the rest, shall overthrow it."
