Page:Three Books of Occult Philosophy (De Occulta Philosophia) (1651).djvu/372

 he bringeth forth certain books noted with obscure letters, affording compendious words of the conceived speech, partly by the figures of beasts of this kind, partly by figures full of knots, and crooked in the manner of a wheel & set thick, twining about like vine tendrels, the reading thereby being defended from the curiosity of the prophane; Therefore we shall be worthy scholars of this science, if we be silent and hide those things which are secret in religion, for the promise of silence (as saith Tertullian) is due to Religion; but they which do otherwise are in very great danger, whence Apuleius saith concerning secrets of holy Writs; I would tell it you, if it were lawfull to tell it; you should know it; if it were lawfull to hear it; but both ears and tongue would contract the same guilt of rash curiosity. So we read Theodorus the tragick poet, when he would have referred somethings of the mysteries of the Jews Scripture to a certain fable, was deprived of sight. Theopompus also who began to translate somethings out of the Divine law into the Greek tongue, was presently troubled in mind and spirit, whence afterward earnestly desiring God, wherefore this had happened to him, received an answer in a dream, because he had basely polluted Divine things, by setting them forth in publike. One Numenius also being very curious of hidden things, incurred the displeasure of the Divine powers, because he interpreted the holy mysteries of the goddesse Eleusina and published them for he dreamed that the goddesses of Eleusis stood in a whores habit before the Brothell house, which when he wondred at, they wrathfully answered, that they were by him violently drawn from their modestly and prostituted everywhere to all commers, by which he was admonished, that the Ceremonies of the gods ought not to be divulged. Therefore it hath alwaies been the great care of the Ancients to wrap up the mysteries of God and nature, and hide them with diverse Aenigmaes, which law the Indians, Brachmans, �thiopians, Persians, and Egyptians also observed; hence Mercurius, Orpheus, and all the ancient Poets and Philosophers, Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato Aristoxenus, Ammonius, kept them inviolably. Hence Plotinus and Origenes