Varieties: or, A surveigh of rare and excellent matters necessary and delectable for all sorts of persons. Wherein the principall heads of diverse sciences are illustrated, rare secrets of naturall things unfoulded, &c. Digested into five bookes, whose severall chapters with their contents are to be seene in the table after the epistle dedicatory. By David Person, of Loghlands in Scotland, Gentleman.

Section 1.

The difference betwixt the Physiologer and Physician; compared to that betwixt the Metaphysician and divine. Some of Plato's opinions not farre dissonant from our Christian: The multiplicity of Heathenish gods: That Plato came neere the definition of the Trinity.

AS, where the Physiologer leaveth to contemplate, there the Physitian beginneth; so where the Metaphy∣sitians end, there the Divines com∣mence their study, not to follow forth their doings, but, to refine their grosser rudiments; like cun∣ning Painters, by the subtiltie of their Art, giving life,

breathing,* 1.1 and in a manner, moving unto a picture, w^ch a more grosse Painter had but rudely delineated.

It was of old held for a truth, Platonicos pa••cis mu∣tatis fieri posse Christianos: That with the change but of a very point, the Platonicke Philosophers might be brought to be Christians; from whence Plato was called Divine.

Who so shall revolve the monuments of his workes,* 1.2 shall find that, not without reason, hee hath beene so styled: for all other sects of Philosophers, have but like men in Cimmerian darkenesse, groping∣ly stumbled, now and then, upon the nature of the true God-head; and every nation in those dayes, had their severall, and those strangely imaginarie Gods, distinguished in so many rankes, imployed in so ma∣ny businesses, appointed to so many different and sometime base offices; that their number, in fine, be∣came almost innumerable!* 1.3 In the meane time this man, soaring above them al, hath more neerly jumped with our beliefe touching the God-head. In so farre that Amuleus that great Doctor in Porphyre his Schooles having read Saint Iohn the Evangelist his proeme, was strooke with silence and admiration, as ravished with his words; but at length burst out in these termes: by Iupiter (saith he) so thinketh a Bar∣barian, meaning Plato; that in the beginning the word was with God, that it is this great God by whom all things were made and created.

Now that this is true, This much I find, in his Par∣menides, concerning the nature of the God-head. That there are three things to bee established concer∣ning the maker of all:* 1.4 which three must be coeternal, viz.

That he is good; that he hath a minde or understan∣ding; and that he is the life of the world.

Notes

• * 1.1

  A Simile.
• * 1.2

  Difference be∣twixt Plato∣nick and Chri∣stians.
• * 1.3

  Multiplicity of Gods, amongst the heathen.
• * 1.4

  The Trinity shadowed by Plato.