So as it is not possible but this quality of knowledge
must fall under popular contempt, the people being apt to contemn
truths upon occasion of controversies and altercations, and to think
they are all out of their way which never meet; and when they see
such digladiation about subtleties, and matters of no use or moment,
they easily fall upon that judgment of Dionysius of Syracusa, Verba
ista sunt senum otiosorum.
(7) Notwithstanding, certain it is that if those schoolmen to their
great thirst of truth and unwearied travail of wit had joined
variety and universality of reading and contemplation, they had
proved excellent lights, to the great advancement of all learning
and knowledge; but as they are, they are great undertakers indeed,
and fierce with dark keeping. But as in the inquiry of the divine
truth, their pride inclined to leave the oracle of God's word, and
to vanish in the mixture of their own inventions; so in the
inquisition of nature, they ever left the oracle of God's works, and
adored the deceiving and deformed images which the unequal mirror of
their own minds, or a few received authors or principles, did
represent unto them.
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