In the first book of it he asserts that "that excellent book of Job, if it be revolved with diligence, will be found pregnant and swelling with natural philosophy," and he endeavours to show that in it the "roundness of the earth," the "fixing of the stars, ever standing at equal distances," the "depression of the southern pole," the "matter of generation," and "matter of minerals" are "with great elegancy noted." But, curiously enough, he uses to support some of these truths the very texts which the fathers of the Church used to destroy them, and those for which he finds Scripture warrant most clearly are such as science has since disproved.

So, too, he says that Solomon was enabled in his Proverbs, "by donation of God, to compile a natural history of all verdure."(280) (280) See Bacon, Advancement of Learning, edited by W.Aldis Wright, London, 1873, pp.

47, 48.

Certainly no more striking examples of the strength of the evil which he had all along been denouncing could be exhibited that these in his own writings.

Nothing better illustrates the sway of the mediaeval theology, or better explains his blindness to the discoveries of Copernicus and to the experiments of Gilbert.