[ 1154] Knowledge and Learning to be owned wheresoever they be found.
IT is observed, that the Egyptians had Idols and very heavy burthens, these the Israelites detested; but they had withall vessels of gold and silver, and these according to Gods command,* 1.1 they made a Religious use of. One seeing Virgil very studious in a dull piece of Ennius Poetry, asked him, what he did with that book? He answered, Lego aurum in stercore, I am gathering gold out of a dunghill. Thus it is, that Knowledge is to be owned wheresoever or in whomsoever it is found; fas est et ab hoste doceri, A man may learn of his Ene∣my; nay, aliena pericula, another Man's harms may teach us how to beware: Much of Morality may be picked up from the Heathens, much of the Knowledg of God from Philosophers, much of Learning from the Poets, and much of Divine truth from some of our well-read Adversaries of Rome, of whom it may be said, as it was sometimes of another,* 1.2 Ubi bene, nemo melius; ubi male, nemo pejus; Where they have written truth,* 1.3 as in meer speculative points of God, the blessed Trinity, &c. th••re no Man better, and there it is that, as the Israelites, so we may go down to the Philistims forges to whet our swords and spears,* 1.4 to be ••urnished with sharp arguments, and solid reasons to the confutation of false and heretical opinions; but where they have roved from the Truth, as in the doctrine of Merit, Indulgences, &c. where you shall be sure alwaies to find a Matthew sitting at the receipt of Custome, there no Man worse; and there we may and must forsake them.