necessity or chance; bestow the honor thereof on nature; make two
powers, the one to be the author of the matter, the other of the
form; and lastly, for want of a workman, have it eternal: which latter
opinion Aristotle, to make himself the author of a new doctrine,
brought into the world: and his Sectators[26] have maintained it;
"parati ac conjurati, quos sequuntur, philosophorum animis invictis
opiniones tueri."[27] For Hermes, who lived at once with, or
soon after Moses, Zoroaster, Musaeus, Orpheus, Linus, Anaximenes,
Anaxagoras, Empedocles, Melissus, Pherecydes, Thales, Cleanthes,
Pythagoras, Plato, and many other (whose opinions are exquisitely
gathered by Steuchius Eugubinus) found in the necessity of invincible
reason, "One eternal and infinite Being," to be the parent of the
universal. "Horum omnium sententia quamvis sit incerta, eodem tamen
spectat, ut Providentiam unam esse consentiant: sive enim natura, sive
aether, sive ratio, sive mens, sive fatalis necessitas, sive divina
lex; idem est quod a nobis dicitur Deus": "All these men's opinions
(saith Lactantius) though uncertain, come to this; That they agree
upon one Providence; whether the same be nature, or light, or reason,
or understanding, or destiny, or divine ordinance, that it is the same
which we call God." Certainly, as all the rivers in the world, though
they have divers risings, and divers runnings; though they sometimes
hide themselves for a while under ground, and seem to be lost in
sea-like lakes; do at last find, and fall into the great ocean:
so after all the searches that human capacity hath, and after all
philosophical contemplation and curiosity; in the necessity of this
infinite power, all the reason of man ends and dissolves itself.

As for the others; the first touching those which conceive the matter
of the world to have been eternal, and that God did not create
the world "Exnihilo,"[28] but "ex materia praeexistente":[29] the