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.

SECT. 8.

The most approved opinion of all Philosophers concer∣ning the Worlds beginning and matter: the infall∣ble truth of it; and a checke of Augustines against over curious inquisitors after those and the like mi∣steries.

THe more tolerable opinion was of those who held all things to be composed in time of the foure elements; admitting the Creatures of the Etheriall Region to bee of a like kinde and species with these of the Sublunary, and yet they thought not that any thing of them could be, but by some preëxisting matter.

Whereas we hold sacred anchor of veritie, that the mightie infinite, eternall, and all-powerfull God, created this World of nothing in and with time about five thousand sixe hundereth and odde yeares agoe,* 1.1 and that hee shall destroy it in time knowne onely to himselfe.

And if they aske what God was doing before this short number yeeres; We answere with S. Augustine replying to such curious questioners, that he was framing Hell for them. Seeing then it was created, and with time, it cannot therefore be eter∣nall: (these two being repugnant and incompatible ad idem as we say) which indeed to mortall men in∣lightned

but with nature only, is hard to beleeve: As for Trismegistus in his Poemander, and Plato in his Timeo, what they have spoken more divinely than others herein, no question but they have fished it out of Moyses his Pentateuch, who flourished before them, as Diodorus and Iosephus both witnesse.

Notes

• * 1.1

  Our Christi∣an beleefe touching the Worlds be∣ginning and ending.