Thus, too, with the states of the world; when we find
ourselves in darkness and in adversity we may surely prophecy light and
prosperity, and when we are in a state of happiness and discipline,
doubtless we have to expect the advent of ignorance and distress. As in
the case of Hermes Trismegistus, who, seeing Egypt in all the splendour
of the sciences and of occultism, so that he considered that men were
consorting with gods and spirits and were in consequence most pious, he
made that prophetic lament to Asclepios, saying that the darkness of new
religions and cults must follow, and that of the then present things
nothing would remain but idle tales and matter for condemnation. So the
Hebrews, when they were slaves in Egypt, and banished to the deserts,
were comforted by their prophets with the hope of liberty and the
re-acquisition of their country; when they were in authority and
tranquillity they were menaced with dispersion and captivity. And as in
these days there is no evil nor injury to which we are not subject, so
there is no good nor honour that we may not promise ourselves. Thus does
it happen to all the other generations and states, the which, if they
endure and be not destroyed entirely by the force of vicissitude, it is
inevitable that from evil they come to good, from good to evil, from low
estate to high, from high to low, out of obscurity into splendour, out
of splendour into obscurity, for this is the natural order of things;
outside of which order, if another should be found which destroys or
corrects it, I should believe it and not dispute it, for I reason with
none other than a natural spirit.
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