A06504:498
An exposition of Solomons book called Ecclesiastes or the preacher. Seen and allowedAn exposition of Salomons booke called Ecclesiastes or the preacher. Seene and allowed
An exposition of Solomons book called Ecclesiastes or the preacher. Seen and allowed.An exposition of Salomons booke called Ecclesiastes or the preacher. Seene and allowed.
London: printed by John Daye, 1573London: printed by Iohn Daye, 1573
Title page typeset from the transcription.
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
Behold (saith the Preacher) this have I found, seeking one by one to find the count, & yet my soul seeketh, but I find it not. I have ⟨p. 132⟩found one man among a thousand, but a woman have I not found among them all.
Beholde (sayth the Preacher) thys haue I founde, seeking one by one to finde the count, & yet my soule seeketh, but I finde it not. I haue ⟨p. 132⟩founde one man among a thousād, but a woman haue I not founde among them all.
That is, through mine experience and observation in things,1 I have learned much, namely how all is vain, let other learn the same also. For this is the greatest wisdom that man can attain to, to know that no wisdom can prevail or do farther then God giveth leave, as Socrates said: I know that I am ignorant, if he rightly understood the same. One by one, one after another, that is, I have run through all devises: I find in them all, that man can not live well after his own ways. And my soul yet seeketh, that is to say, I see mine own vanity and others, and yet I cease not my folly, nor can stay my self, but seek still for that I know I can not find. I have found one man of a thousand, that is, which seeth how his own wisdom is of no force, howsoever things fall out otherwise then they devised: so rare & seld they are, that have attained to this denied wisdom. So Demosthenes after he had uttered all his wisdom said, that wisdom profited ⟨image 136⟩not. Hereof the Philosophers said, that all things came to pass by chance and fortune. For they could not imagine that the wisdom of God was far greater and higher then all mens ways and devises.