Thus much therefore for divine testimony
and evidence concerning the true dignity and value of learning.
VII. (1) As for human proofs, it is so large a field, as in a
discourse of this nature and brevity it is fit rather to use choice
of those things which we shall produce, than to embrace the variety
of them. First, therefore, in the degrees of human honour amongst
the heathen, it was the highest to obtain to a veneration and
adoration as a God. This unto the Christians is as the forbidden
fruit. But we speak now separately of human testimony, according to
which--that which the Grecians call apotheosis, and the Latins
relatio inter divos--was the supreme honour which man could
attribute unto man, specially when it was given, not by a formal
decree or act of state (as it was used among the Roman Emperors),
but by an inward assent and belief. Which honour, being so high,
had also a degree or middle term; for there were reckoned above
human honours, honours heroical and divine: in the attribution and
distribution of which honours we see antiquity made this difference;
that whereas founders and uniters of states and cities, lawgivers,
extirpers of tyrants, fathers of the people, and other eminent
persons in civil merit, were honoured but with the titles of
worthies or demigods, such as were Hercules, Theseus, Minus,
Romulus, and the like; on the other side, such as were inventors and
authors of new arts, endowments, and commodities towards man's life,
were ever consecrated amongst the gods themselves, as was Ceres,
Bacchus, Mercurius, Apollo, and others.
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