Selected quad for the lemma: book_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
book_n	wonderful_a	world_n	writer_n	25	3	7.9654	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A65093	The works of the famous antiquary, Polidore Virgil containing the original of all arts, sciences, mysteries, orders, rites, and ceremonies, both ecclesiastical and civil : a work useful for all divines, historians, lawyers, and all artificers / compendiously English't by John [i.e. Thomas] Langley.; De rerum inventoribus. English	Vergil, Polydore, 1470?-1555.; Langley, Thomas, d. 1581.	1663 (1663)	Wing V596; ESTC R28374	121,672	340

men of Greece hath an opinion that water was the material cause of all things Contrariwise Heraclitus an Ephesian and Hippasus suppose all to be procreated of fire Empedocles saith the four Eleme●ts were the causes of things as Lucretius writeth Of Water Earth Ayre and fiery glede All things natural duely procede Anaximenes thinketh all things to have their beginning of the Ayre Metrodorus assirmeth the universal World to be eternal without begining or end Epicurus one of Democritus disciples putteth two causes Atomes or Motes and vacuity or emptinesse of these he saith the four Elements come These are the opinions of the Philosophers that were men without the knowledge of God but as Moses and Josephus record the Scripture concludeth that in the beginning God made all things of nothing as Saint John saith all things were made by him And therefore as Lactantius writeth let no man be curious in searching of what materiall God made these great and wonderfull works for he formed them all of nothing by the power of his mighty word For as David the Prophet singeth he spake the word and they were made he gave Commandement and they were created Of the same opinion is Plato in his book called Timeus CHAP. III. The procreation of Man the diversity of Languages and division of Nations THe most famous writers of natural Histories as Diodorus recordeth spake of two sundry manners of birth and first stock of mankind For they which contend that the World was ungenerate and without any danger of corruption say also that man hath been in a certain perpetuity without beginning Of this opinion were Pithagoras Architas Xenocrates and Aristotle with other Peripateticks affirming that all things in the eternal world which have been or shall hereafter come to passe be by Generation endlesse and without beginning and have onely a circuit and course of Generations wherein both the birth and naturall resolution of things may be perceived Other that suppose this world had both an Originall cause of being and shall also end by putrifaction hold opinion that man had a time of his Generation For this cause the Aegyptians report that men were first born among them as well by reason of the fruitfull ranknesse of the soil and seasonableness of the Ayre and because of the River Nilus which for the lusty fatnesse of the slime doth procreate diverse kinds of beasts and hath in it self naturally a certain nutritive power For in the Country of Thebais Mice be engendred of the mud wherefore men in those parts stand in admiration when they behold the fore-parts of them to the brest wallow and move sensibly in the mire and the hinder partts not yet fashioned and without shape Neverthelesse Psammaticus their King desiring to know in what Countrey men were first begotten devised this means He caused two young Infants new born to be delivered to his herdmen to be brought up among his cattell and commanded that no man should speak any word to them because he would know what word they would speak first Then two years after when the herdmen opened thè door where they were nourished they stretched out their hands and cried Becos which in the Phrygians language signifieth bread Thus it was known that the Phrygians were the eldest lineage and first born The Ethiopians do conjecture themselves to be the first because no man would come out of any other place into that Region and they of that be by a general con●ent called home-bred and as Diodorus saith it is probable that those under the Meridional Aequator should be the ancientest of all For seeing the heat of the Sun drieth up the moysture of the earth and hath also of it self a power to give and preserve the life of things it is like that the place which is scituate nearest to the Sun should bring forth the first living creatures For that cause Anaximander taught that men first sprung of water and Earth warmed with lively heat Empedocles in a manner confirmeth the same where he writeth that every particular member was severally made and proportioned of the Earth as a mother and so to have been compacted and conglutinated by heat and moisture into the perfect figure and shape of a man Democritus thinketh men were first made of Water and Mudde tempered together Zeno judgeth the cause of Mankind to have proceeded of the New World And men to be onely begotten by the ayd and comfort of the divine fire that is the providence of God As for the Poets some feign how man was made out of soft clay by Prometheus Some say that they sprung of the hard stones that Deucalion and Pirrha cast And thus much is of the vain opinions of the Gentiles But to speak the truth as Scripture teacheth the beginning of man was in Jewry For God when he had finished the World did create the first man Adam of the Earth of the field of Damascus as some think Thus Adam made by God marrying his Wife Eve was authour and beginner of the whole Posterity and Linage But for as much as God formed but one man and indued him with one kind of speech onely to utter and declare the things that he contained in his mind men perchance will marvail what the cause should be that there be at this day so many diverse languages that according to the variety of Countries there be sundry speeches And therefore I thought it convenient to shew the occasion of the same When Nimrod the son of Cham that was son to Noe after the universal floud went about to withoraw men which feared the danger of drowning from the worship of God supposing all their hope to consist in their own might and power perswaded them to build a Tower of such altitude that the water should not be able to overflow it Whilest they were thus earnestly occupied about their enterprise God divided their speeches in such sort that not one of them could understand another by reason of the discord and disagreeing of their languages And thus began the diversity of tongues that we use now The same was the occasion that the posterities of Noe were dispersed and scattered abroad For when one could not understand another's language it came to passe that every man departed into sundry Provinces add Countries and there named places whereof they had the government and also Cities which they builded after their own names as Eusebius testifieth The sonnes of Noe were Sem Cham and Japhet The issue of Sem was Elam whereof the Elamites came Assur of whom the Assyrians were named Arphaxad was the first founder of the Arabians and Lud of the Lidians the children of Cham were Chus that named the Ethiopians and Mesre the beginner of the Egyptians Chanaan of whom the Canaanites had their name the linage of Chus was Seba whereof the Sebees came