copy of Enoch's pillars,<34> had they many nearer authors
than Josephus, or did not relish somewhat of the fable.
Some men have written more than others have spoken.
Pineda<35> quotes more authors, in one work,* than are
necessary in a whole world. Of those three great inven-
tions in Germany,<36> there are two which are not without
their incommodities, and 'tis disputable whether they
exceed not their use and commodities. 'Tis not a melan-
choly utinam of my own, but the desires of better heads,
that there were a general synod--not to unite the incom-
patible difference of religion, but,--for the benefit of


* Pineda, in his "Monarchia Ecclesiastica," quotes one
thousand and forty authors.
learning, to reduce it, as it lay at first, in a few and solid
authors; and to condemn to the fire those swarms and
millions of rhapsodies, begotten only to distract and
abuse the weaker judgments of scholars, and to maintain
the trade and mystery of typographers.

Sect. 25.--I cannot but wonder with what exception
the Samaritans could confine their belief to the Penta-
teuch, or five books of Moses. I am ashamed at the
rabbinical interpretation of the Jews upon the Old
Testament,<37> as much as their defection from the New:
and truly it is beyond wonder, how that contemptible
and degenerate issue of Jacob, once so devoted to ethnick
superstition, and so easily seduced to the idolatry of
their neighbours, should now, in such an obstinate and