is established upon the sacred writings.

Books delight us, when prosperity smiles upon us; they comfort us
inseparably when stormy fortune frowns on us. They lend validity
to human compacts, and no serious judgments are propounded
without their help. Arts and sciences, all the advantages of
which no mind can enumerate, consist in books. How highly must
we estimate the wondrous power of books, since through them we
survey the utmost bounds of the world and time, and contemplate
the things that are as well as those that are not, as it were in
the mirror of eternity. In books we climb mountains and scan the
deepest gulfs of the abyss; in books we behold the finny tribes
that may not exist outside their native waters, distinguish the
properties of streams and springs and of various lands; from
books we dig out gems and metals and the materials of every kind
of mineral, and learn the virtues of herbs and trees and plants,
and survey at will the whole progeny of Neptune, Ceres, and
Pluto.

But if we please to visit the heavenly inhabitants, Taurus,
Caucasus, and Olympus are at hand, from which we pass beyond the
realms of Juno and mark out the territories of the seven planets
by lines and circles. And finally we traverse the loftiest
firmament of all, adorned with signs, degrees, and figures in the
utmost variety. There we inspect the antarctic pole, which eye
hath not seen, nor ear heard; we admire the luminous Milky Way
and the Zodiac, marvellously and delightfully pictured with
celestial animals. Thence by books we pass on to separate
substances, that the intellect may greet kindred intelligences,
and with the mind's eye may discern the First Cause of all things