Note t — BOOK V.

For Ages of Learning and Ignorance, we may compare the present, and some of the Ages before the Reformation. The last Century, and the few Years of this, have had the Happiness to be able to vie with any Age for the Number of learned Men of all Professions, and the Improvement made in all Arts and Sciences; too many, and too well known to need a Specification.

But for Ignorance, we may take the ninth Age, and so down to the Reformation; even as low as Queen Elizabeth, although Learning began to flourish; yet we may guess how Matters stood, even among the Clergy, by her 53 Injunct. Nᵒ. 1559, Such as are but mean Readers, shall peruse over before, once or twice, the Chapters and Homilies, to the Intent they may read to the better Understanding of the People, the more Encouragement of Godliness. Spar. Collect. p. 82. But this is nothing, in comparison to the Ages before, when the Monk said, Græcum non est legi; or as Espencæus more elegantly hath it, Gracè nôsse suspectum, Hebraicè prope Hæreticum. Which Suspicion, (said the learned Hakewill,) Rhemigius surely was not guilty of, in commenting upon diffamatus, 1 Thes. i. 8. who saith, that St. Paul somewhat improperly put that for divulgatus, not being aware that St. Paul wrote in Greek, and not in Latin. Nay, so great was their Ignorance, not only of Greek, but of Latin too, that a Priest baptiz’d in nomine Patria, & Filia, & Spiritua sancta. Another suing his Parishioners for not paving his Church, prov’d it from Jer. xvii. 18. Paveant illi, non paveam ego. Some Divines in Erasmus’s Time, undertook to prove Hereticks ought to be burnt, because the Apostle said, Hæreticum devita. Two Fryars disputing about a Plurality of Worlds, one prov’d it from Annon decem sunt facti mundi? The other reply’d, Sed ubi sunt novem? And notwithstanding their Service was read in Latin, yet so little was that understood, that an old Priest in Hen. VIII. read Mumpsimus Domine, for Sumpsimus: And being admonish’d of it, he said, he had done so for thirty Years, and would not leave his old Mumpsimus for their new Sumpsimus. Vid. Hakew. Apol. L. 3. c. 7. Sect. 2.