Great,[1] that he did what in him lay to extinguish all heathen antiquities; I do not find that those zeals[2] do any great effects, nor last long; as it appeared in the succession of Sabinian,[3] who did revive the former antiquities.
The vicissitude or mutations in the Superior Globe are no fit matter for this present argument. It may be, Plato's great year,[4] if the world should last so long, would have some effect; not in renewing the state of like individuals, (for that is the fume[5] of those that conceive the celestial bodies have more accurate influences upon these things below than indeed they have,) but in gross.[6] Comets, out of question, have likewise power and
- ↑ Gregory the Great, Saint Gregory, lived from about 540 to 604 A.D., and was Pope, 590–604. In the year 597, Gregory sent Augustine and a band of forty monks to Ethelbert, King of Kent, and within the space of a year Ethelbert had embraced Christianity, together with some ten thousands of his subjects.
- ↑ Zeal. Enthusiasm; fervor. No longer used in the plural.
- ↑ Pope Sabinian, died 606 A.D. He was the immediate successor of Gregory the Great.
- ↑ "Plato's great year," or the perfect year, will be rounded out when all the planets return to one and the same region of the heavens at the same time. As to its duration, there is no agreement among the ancients. Tacitus, on the authority of Cicero, gives it 12,954 years, but Cicero himself expresses no opinion. Plato discusses the problem in the Timaeus, XI, 88 and 39.
- ↑ Fume. Something which 'goes to the head' and clouds the faculties or the reason.
"The charm dissolves apace;
And as the morning steals upon the night,
Melting the darkness, so their rising senses
Begin to chase the ignorant fumes that mantle
Their clearer reason."
Shakspere. The Tempest. v. 1.
- ↑ In gross, or in the gross. In a general way; generally; without going into particulars; in the main; on the whole.
"The unlettered Christian, who believes in gross,
Plods on to heaven, and ne'er is at a loss."
Dryden. Religio Laici. ll. 322–323.
