ration or otherwise. [6311]Plato in his Phaedrus hath these words,
"Apollo's priests in Delphos, and at Dodona, in their fury do many pretty
feats, and benefit the Greeks, but never in their right wits." He makes
them all mad, as well he might; and he that shall but consider that
superstition of old, those prodigious effects of it (as in its place I will
shew the several furies of our fatidici dii, pythonissas, sibyls,
enthusiasts, pseudoprophets, heretics, and schismatics in these our latter
ages) shall instantly confess, that all the world again cannot afford so
much matter of madness, so many stupendous symptoms, as superstition,
heresy, schism have brought out: that this species alone may be paralleled
to all the former, has a greater latitude, and more miraculous effects;
that it more besots and infatuates men, than any other above named
whatsoever, does more harm, works more disquietness to mankind, and has
more crucified the souls of mortal men (such hath been the devil's craft)
than wars, plagues, sicknesses, dearth, famine, and all the rest.

Give me but a little leave, and I will set before your eyes in brief a
stupendous, vast, infinite ocean of incredible madness and folly: a sea
full of shelves and rocks, sands, gulfs, euripes and contrary tides, full
of fearful monsters, uncouth shapes, roaring waves, tempests, and siren
calms, halcyonian seas, unspeakable misery, such comedies and tragedies,
such absurd and ridiculous, feral and lamentable fits, that I know not
whether they are more to be pitied or derided, or may be believed, but that
we daily see the same still practised in our days, fresh examples, _nova
novitia_, fresh objects of misery and madness, in this kind that are still
represented unto us, abroad, at home, in the midst of us, in our bosoms.

But before I can come to treat of these several errors and obliquities,
their causes, symptoms, affections, &c., I must say something necessarily
of the object of this love, God himself, what this love is, how it
allureth, whence it proceeds, and (which is the cause of all our miseries)
how we mistake, wander and swerve from it.

Amongst all those divine attributes that God doth vindicate to himself,
eternity, omnipotency, immutability, wisdom, majesty, justice, mercy, &c.,
his [6312]beauty is not the least, one thing, saith David, have I desired
of the Lord, and that I will still desire, to behold the beauty of the
Lord, Psal. xxvii. 4. And out of Sion, w