Chapter 30
47. Further, as to the remaining arts, whether those by which something is
made which, when the effort of the workman is over, remains as a result of his
work, as, for example, a house, a bench, a dish, and other things of that
kind; or those which, so to speak, assist God in His operations, as medicine,
and agriculture, and navigation: or those whose sole result is an action, as
dancing, and racing, and wrestling;—in all these arts experience teaches us
to infer the future from the past. For no man who is skilled in any of these
arts moves his limbs in any operation without connecting the memory of the
past with the expectation of the future. Now of these arts a very superficial
and cursory knowledge is to be acquired, not with a view to practicing them
(unless some duty compel us, a matter on which I do not touch at present), but
with a view to forming a judgement about them, that we may not be wholly
ignorant of what Scripture means to convey when it employs figures of speech
derived from these arts.
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