and frayle life, and changed those heauenly delightes and pleasures of olde for this cursed earth▪ and consequently his posterity, when they had replenished the whole worlde, appearing farre worse (one or two excepted) haue chosen certayne▪ sauage and brutishe maners, and with all this bitter and sorowful life, & cast in their mindes nether city nether common weale, nether artes, ne∣ther sciences whatsoeuer▪ and retayned amongest them not as much as the name either of lawes or iudgements, and to be short not once as much as the vewe of vertue and philosophie, but liuing among beastes, spent their time in wildernesse, as ••••eldish men and voyd of humanity, corrupting the reasonable vnderstanding agreable with nature, the reasonable seedes of mans minde with their wilful malice, yelding them selues wholy to al abominations, so that sometimes they infect eche other, sometimes they sleye eche other, sometimes they deuoure mans fleshe, presuming to wage batle with God after the famous battel of the foolish Giants, determining and imagining in their minde to wall heauen and earthe in one, and beinge moued throughe the madnesse of their minde they went about to conquere God the gouerner of all thinges, whereby they haue thus sore incensed him agaynst them selues. God the duerseer and ruler of all things, reuenged them with floodes and destructions of fiery flames, as if they had bene a certaine wilde, vmnanured thickett, ouerspreadinge the whole earthe: also with famyne and continuall plagues, with bat∣tayle and thunderboltes from aboue he cut them of, and subdued that seuere and most bitter mala∣dye of their soules: by restrayning them with more sharpe punishments & imprisonments. When malice was now flowen vnto the brimme and had ouercast al with the couer thereof, ouershadow∣ing & ouerdarkening the mindes of mortall men, as it were a certaine soking slumber of drunken∣nesse: that first begotten wisedome of God, and the same worde that was in the beginning with God by his superabundant louing kindnes, appeared vnto the inhabiters on earth sometimes by vision of Angels, sometimes by him selfe, as the helping power of God vnto some one or other of the auncient worshippers of God, in no other forme or figure then of man, for otherwise their ca∣pacity could not haue comprised the same. After that now by them the seede of piety was sowen & scattered amiddes the multitude of men, and the whole nations which from the Hebrewes linea∣ly descended had now purposed to preferre godlines vpon earth: he deliuered vnto them of olde by his seruant Moses, after strait institutions certayne figures and formes of a mi••ticall Sabaoth and circumcision, and entrances vnto other spiritual contemplations, but not the perfect & playne mysteries thereof. When as the law was published and set forth as a sweete 〈…〉〈…〉 vnto all men, then many of the Gentils through the law makers, euery where yea and philosophers changed their rude, brutish, and sauage senses vnto meeke and milde natures, so that thereby there ensued amongest them perfect peace, familiarity, and frendshipithen againe to al men and to the Gentils throughout al the worlde, as it were now in this behalfe holpen and fit to receaue the knowledge of his father, the same schoolemaster of vertue, his fathers minister in al goodnes, the deuine and celestiall worde of God through man with corporall substance not different from ours, shewed him selfe about the beginning of the Romaine empire, wrought and suffred such thinges as were consonant with holy Scripture which foreshewed there shoulde be borne such a one as shoulde be both God and man, a mighty worker of miracles, an instructor of the Gentiles in his fathers pie∣ty, and that his wonderfull birth shoulde be declared, his new doctrine, his wonderfull workes, besides this the maner of his death, his resurrection from the dead, and aboue all his diuine resti∣tution into the heauens. The Prophet Daniel beholdinge his kingdome in the spirit to be in the latter age of the worlde, whereas otherwhere deuinely yet here more after the maner of man des∣cribeth the vision of God. I beheld (sayth he) vntill the thrones vvere placed, and the au••••••ent of dayes sate theron, his garments vvere as the vvhite snovve, the heares of his heade as pure vvoll, his throne a flame of fire, his chariots burning fire, a fyry streame slyded before his face, a thou∣sande thousandes ministred vnto him, the iudgement vvas set, & the bookes vvere opened, &c. Againe: And againe after this I behelde (sayth he) and beholde one comminge in the cloudes like the Sonne of man, and he came still vnto the auncient of dayes, & he vvas brought ••••••ore him, and to him vvas geuen principalitie, & honour, and rule, and al people, tribes, and to 〈…〉〈…〉 shall serue him, his povver is an euerlasting povver vvhiche shall not pa••••e, his kingdome 〈…〉〈…〉 neuer be destroyed. These thinges truely may be referred to none other then in out 〈…〉〈…〉 God that was the word, being in the beginning with the father, and named 〈…〉〈…〉 reason of his incarnation in the latter tin••es, 〈◊〉〈◊〉 ••••eause we haue in out 〈…〉〈…〉 propheticall expositions touching our Lord 〈…〉〈…〉 Christ, and therin hath 〈…〉〈…〉