The Advancement of Learning (1605 first edition)

...spoiled by vain philosophy: for the contemplation of God’s creatures and works produces (when considering the works and creatures themselves) knowledge; but when considering God, it produces no perfect knowledge, but only wonder, which is "broken knowledge." And therefore it was most aptly said by one of Plato’s school likely a reference to Philo Judaeus, a Hellenistic Jewish philosopher, “That the sense of man carries a resemblance to the Sun, which (as we see) opens and reveals all the terrestrial globe; but then again, it obscures and conceals the stars and the celestial globe. So does the sense discover natural things, but it darkens and shuts out the divine.” And from this, it is true that it has happened that various great learned men have become heretical, while they have sought to fly up to the secrets of the Deity using the waxen wings of the senses a reference to the myth of Icarus, whose wings melted when he flew too close to the sun.

And as for the idea original: "conceit" that too much knowledge might incline a man toward atheism, and that ignorance of second causes the natural laws and physical processes through which God acts should create a more devout dependence upon God, who is the first cause: First, it is good to ask the question that Job asked of his friends: “Will you lie for God, as one man will do for another, to gratify Him?” Job 13:7 For it is certain that God works nothing in nature except through second causes; and if they would have it believed otherwise, it is a mere imposture—a supposed "favor" toward God that is actually nothing else but offering to the Author of Truth the unclean sacrifice of a lie.

Furthermore, it is an assured truth and a conclusion drawn from experience that a little or superficial...