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There is a toy which I have heard, and I would not have it given over, but waited upon a little.  They say it is observed in the Low Countries (I know not in what part) that every five and thirty years, the same kind and suit of years and weathers come about again;  as great frosts, great wet, great droughts, warm winters, summers with little heat, and the like;  and they call it the Prime.  It is a thing I do the rather mention, because, computing backwards, I have found some concurrence.

But to leave these points of nature, and to come to men.  The greatest vicissitude of things amongst men, is the vicissitude of sects and religions.  For those orbs rule in men's minds most.  The true religion is built upon the rock;  the rest are tossed, upon the waves of time.  To speak, therefore, of the causes of new sects;  and to give some counsel concerning them, as far as the weakness of human judgment can give stay, to so great revolutions.  When the religion formerly received, is rent by discords;  and when the holiness of the professors of religion, is decayed and full of scandal;  and withal the times be stupid, ignorant, and barbarous;  you may doubt the springing up of a new sect;  if then also, there should arise any extravagant and strange spirit, to make himself author thereof.  All which points held, when Mahomet published his law.  If a new sect have not two properties, fear it not;  for it will not spread.  The one is the supplanting, or the opposing, of authority established;  for nothing is more popular than that.  The other is the giving license to pleasures, and a voluptuous life.  For as for speculative heresies (such as were in ancient times the Arians, and now the Armenians), though they work mightily upon men's wits, yet they do not produce any great alterations in states;  except it be by the help of civil occasions.  There be three manner of plantations of new sects.  By the power of signs and miracles;  by the eloquence, and wisdom, of speech and persuasion;  and by the sword.  For martyrdoms, I reckon them amongst miracles;  because they seem to exceed the strength of human nature:  and I may do the like, of superlative and admirable holiness of life.  Surely there is no better way, to stop the rising of new sects and schisms, than to reform abuses;  to compound the smaller differences;  to proceed mildly, and not with sanguinary persecutions;  and rather to take off the principal authors by winning and advancing them, than to enrage them by violence and bitterness.

The changes and vicissitude in wars are many;  but chiefly in three things;  in the seats or stages of the war;  in the weapons;  and in the manner of the conduct.  Wars, in ancient time, seemed more to move from east to west;  for the Persians, Assyrians, Arabians, Tartars (which were the invaders) were all eastern people.  It is true, the Gauls were western;  but we read but of two incursions of theirs:  the one to Gallo-Grecia, the other to Rome.  But east and west have no certain points of heaven;  and no more have the wars, either from the east or west, any certainty of observation.  But north and south are fixed;  and it hath seldom or never been seen that the far southern people have invaded the northern, but contrariwise.  Whereby it is manifest that the northern tract of the world, is in nature the more martial region:  be it in respect of the stars of that hemisphere;  or of the great continents that are upon the north, whereas the south part, for aught that is known, is almost all sea;  or (which is most apparent) of the cold of the northern parts, which is that which, without aid of discipline, doth make the bodies hardest, and the courages warmest.

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