And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth.
Ver. 22. Be fruitful and multiply.] By bidding them do so, he made them do so, for his words are operative. Trismegist saith the self-same things in effect that Moses here doth. God, saith he, crieth out to his works by his holy word, saying, "Bring ye forth fruit, grow and increase," &c. Note the harmony here, and in twenty more passages, between Mercury and Moses. a God hath not left his truth without witness from the mouths of heathen writers. We may profitably read them, but not for ostentation. That were to make a calf of the treasure gotten out of Egypt.
a Morneus, De Verit. Relig. c. 9.