Alcoran of the Turks (I speak without prejudice) is an
ill-composed piece, containing in it vain and ridiculous
errors in philosophy, impossibilities, fictions, and vanities
beyond laughter, maintained by evident and open so-
phisms, the policy of ignorance, deposition of universities,
and banishment of learning. That hath gotten foot by
arms and violence: this, without a blow, hath dis-
seminated itself through the whole earth. It is not
unremarkable, what Philo first observed, that the law
of Moses continued two thousand years without the
least alteration; whereas, we see, the laws of other
commonwealths do alter with occasions: and even those,
that pretended their original from some divinity, to
have vanished without trace or memory. I believe,
besides Zoroaster, there were divers others that writ
before Moses; who, notwithstanding, have suffered the
common fate of time. Men's works have an age, like
themselves; and though they outlive their authors, yet
have they a stint and period to their duration. This
only is a work too hard for the teeth of time, and cannot
perish but in the general flames, when all things shall
confess their ashes.

Sect. 24.--I have heard some with deep sighs lament
the lost lines of Cicero; others with as many groans
deplore the combustion of the library of Alexandria;<33>
for my own part, I think there be too many in the
world; and could with patience behold the urn and
ashes of the Vatican, could I, with a few others, recover
the perished leaves of Solomon. I would not omit a