fatal Act of Sinning and that every Man because subject to Sin and the slavish Law of his lustful Appetite becomes captivated by the man of Sin so yields himself captive to the Prisons of Death whose outward progression is actually moved by irregular motion of the desires inward But the Heavens we see and the Celestial Incolists how they never since the Creation consented to Sin and as they were so are they still carried about with a rapid motion The reason whereof must necessarily spring from an internal cause and intrinsick principle since intelligences are so ambigious and what is this principle if not the Soul of the World or the Universal Spirit God has put into Nature whereby as a Magnet it retains the matter which labouring to re-assume its former liberty frames to her self a habitation in the Centre and branching into the several Members of the Body makes more room to act and bestir her faculties No wonder therefore that natures are compounded since nothing but the Almighty is without composition Nor is it the great or the lesser World that which transmutes nutrition into blood but the active Spirit of Life and transmutation is that which is indeed the Life of the Body Since material principles therefore are only passive and can neither alter nor purifie the parts we find them in a state to be altered and purified tho not to communicate or dispose themselves to another substance beyond their native intention Wherefore we have considered them altogether finite and therefore have concluded them also determinate Now if this be a secret you may call it so but as truth needs no voucher it s a substantial truth Wherefore to conclude this philosophick Hypothesis let us throw away if possible those two celebrated crutches of pretended modern sanctity and the solemnity of Ceremony and what results but primitive purity which since the Creation has known no deformity And God said in the Text let us now make Man in our own Image let us make him and after our likeness and let them have dominion over the Fish in the Sea the Fowl in the Air over the Cattle also and over all the Earth and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the Earth By this the Creation seem'd to want a Head and less than a Prince is too little to govern it Adam must therefore be a Universal Monarch and sway the Throne and the Regal Scepter And Adam must not only wear Heavens Livery but personate the King of Heaven himself Here the Divinest seems to Summons a Councel and God said in himself let us now make Man not like to any thing already made but let us make him in likeness like our self in our own similitude and likeness let us make him and enlarge his Empire by giving him dominion over all the Fish that swim in the Sea and over all the Fowl that fly in the Air over the Cattle also that move on the Earth and over every living creature that creepeth and moveth the Wisdome of God so divinely ordered This was a large and copious Commission that God intrusted a single Subject withal yet such was the good opinion the Creator had of the Creature that God intrusts Adam with the Stock of the Creation and all the Creatures and every complicated Being that was made comprehended and contained in it And Adam drew all his supplies from above since enricht with the Stock and the Treasures of Heaven nor converst he with any inferiour Subject nor any thing in any respect unsuitable to himself whereby he might indignifie or diminish his Authority In the cool of the Evening he walked with God and in the heat of the day the Aquaducts refresht him Aurora sent him Summons of approach of Day but the Night nor was darkness dreadful to him The Celestial Sun was his daily Tapour and the Catalogue of Stars his hourly Contemplation but the Son of God his perpetual Lamp. So that his outside was bettered by his inside and because richly adorned and divinely beautified he saw no darkness nor the shadow of Death whiles he stood in this innocent State of Perfection For God in the Idea beholding a shape or as I may so say a representation of himself became therewith inamour'd and extreamly loving it would cohabit with it when immediately upon the resolution the operation ensued and then was this great Image the beautiful World or rather the representative of his Maker brought forth and created And God said to himself or the holy Word increase in increasing and multiply in multitudes But to Man only because Lord of the Creation I have endowed him with mind and made him immortal So that if he die the cause of death must necessarily proceed from excess of the body and inequallity of Elements and pray tell me what death is if not a cold icy touch or a dismal darkness of the compounded moist nature adhering only to the sensible World. Let no Man wonder therefore that the light of God which illuminates the World is unlike the Beam or Ray of the Sun that by reason of its fiery and excessive brightness immediately and at once strikes the eye with blindness but rather to the contrary Heavens brighter Glory never at any time dazles the mind since the mind is the Souls ingressive eye that soars up aloft to those elevated Mansions where that light shines that enlightneth every Man already come or to come into the World and is the beauty and glory of light and our saving health that influenceth illuminates and beautifieth the Creation and every Creature and created Being But Man above all because made a Monarch and capable to receive this blessed influence proceeding from God the Majesty of Light and superexcellent brightness that diefies the Soul whiles yet in the Body it s he that 's only blest to contemplate this divine beauty and live up to the Vertue of Piety and Holiness So that Adam in a state of innocency represents as Montanus says a Mortal God and our Heavenly Redeemer an immortal Man if when to consider the blessed Incarnation And thus the things that are were made manifest in time but the things that are and not yet made manifest lie hid and conceal'd in the Divinest himself who is all things in all yet subsists without them manifest only in the mind of Man but invisible to the World and the visible eye except in the act of creating only And as the eminency of all appearing beauties are in the Essence much more pure so great and greater is the disproportion of beauty betwixt this of Earth and the Beauty of Heaven All things therefore subject to the Eye represent to us only things subject to sence or more fully to explain it visible operation whiles the Fabrick of the Body needs and requires those similar things that it cannot with conveniency live well without them But the Beauty and Majesty of invisible Beings are inspected only by intellectual Converse since the
separable from its native Principium is subject to Mortality but Death is the Destruction of all Elemental compounded Mixts All Compounds therefore are subject to Mortality which Nature endeavours with all her might to preserve if possible from the Periods of Death and whose Champions to purchase this heroick Victory Fire and Water are instituted and appointed the most proper and immediate Agents and Instruments the last to discharge by immersive Calcination all exteriour and superfluous Adustion whiles the first by Sublimation claims a Superiority because when to separate by the intense Action of Fire whatever Recrements and Impurities adhere to the Center These and no other are the lineal Tracts that Nature has trod in since the nonage of the Universe whose Seeds void of Form and confusedly mix'd in a Hoil or Chaos were dissolved in Water but rarified and sublimed by pure Argument of Fire Calcination and Sublimation therefore were purposely invented to purge and separate the Pure from the Impure as is Solution and Distillation the more terrestrial Dregs that stiffly adhere to the Parts extraneous Now whatever remains without any beginning that Subject is altogether uncapable of end But all Beginnings sprung up from Eternity as is Eternity the Ray of the Majesty Eternity therefore is the Parent of Time from whence Generation lineally descended and Generation because the Infant and the Child of Time has its Periods lock'd up in the Prisons of Death and doom'd and predestinated by the Law of Sin the Apostle tells us is Death in the abstract yet improperly the End of any thing save Elements whereby to remonstrate their true Beginnings but now to bud and to blossom forth because directing towards an eternal State which I call the new Breathings from a State of Corruption precedent to Putrefaction the immature Offspring and imperfect Birth of infirm Ancestors and Elementary Principles For the Body no sooner dismantles it self of the exteriour Form and Elementary Faetor when the indivisibility of the more purer Parts begin at once to display themselves for the Treasures of Life are most strictly lock'd up and which also begins to perspire and breath forth by the glorious Ray of God's Soveraign Power whose refulgent Beam illuminates the World and stirs up the hidden Life therein which before seem'd to sleep passively perdue in the silent Sepulcher of Divine Contemplation If therefore debasing our selves by Sin be Argument of Death and God's eternal Displeasure a Regenerate state implies the Sanctity of Renovation which is a clear Demonstration of a real Conversion Otherwise how comes it to pass that the unbelieving Wife is sanctified by the believing Husband Now if Husband and Wife are constipated one Flesh by the Conjugal Celebration and Law of Matrimony why not Heaven and Earth under the like Divine Ordinance since by a Supream Law from the Sovereign Legislator whose powerful Edicts are for ever irrevocable made and established Synonima Regalia Thus thâ— Celestial Sun in the clarified Firmament influenceth and impregnates this embellish'd Creation as do's the Supercelestial Son of the Majesty of God most illustriously shine in every Believers Soul and is the true Light that illuminates the Universe and every Man that cometh into the World. So that in this short and compendious Paragraph you may read the Divine Progeny of the whole Creation the Exaltation and Dignity of the Micro as the Macrocosm the great End why the World and Man was made the Reason also why the Divinest made Man and drest up so beautifully this stupendious Creation All which was only but to see himself and Sovereign Majesty by way of Reflection wherefore he built up a Tabernacle in Man for his Divine Residence and Man's Redemption Now Adam was made this Supream Monarch whom his Maker dignified with such eminent Qualifications as not only to see because having the faculty of Sense but to inspeculate and admire the Majesty of his Maker that hung up aloft in the Firmament of Heaven so many Luminous and Beautious Bodies impregnating every one with the Blessings of Vegetation but Moral Reason and barren Apprehension because uncapable to exalt it self to these eminent sublime and superlative Elevations of necessity sinks under them And here Moses tells you That in the beginning the Divinest created both the Heavens and the Earth Now creating or making what implies it more than manifesting Invisibles by Visibles or discovering such things as lay hid in the Chaos occultly concealed from occular view which in time appeared but not until such time as the Waters by the Fiat were separated from the Waters and then the purer matter ascended upwards because disintangled from its impure Fecula which Celestial Clarified and Pure Crystalline Body is by the Scriptures interpreted the Firmament And Hermes tells you in his Smaragdine Table That the likeness of that which is placed above is also beneath coinhabiting below to work the Myracle of one single thing There must therefore of necessity be some assimilation in Earth Soveraignly qualified with the same existence of Celestials otherwise pray tell me where 's the harmony betwixt them And why should God select the little World called Man for his Divine and Glorious Reception rejecting as I may so say the more copious or great one as the more commaculate and impure habitation had not he divinely dignified the less by Soveraign Wisdom for his Royal Entertainment There is therefore not only the likeness of Superiours but the same Vertue Beauty and Excellency also in Inferiours Christ in you the hope of Glory This is that Magnet of Vertue and Swavity whose illustrious Ray attracts the Soul to those transcendent Mansions of Beatitude and Immortallity For the Kings Daughter is all glorious within because made glorious by the King of Heaven where note by way of Digression when to admit of a faint comparison the Anima or Sulphur of Sols beauteous inside when duely examined by a sedulous Adept a Celestial Corporiety displays it self whose glorious appearance gratifies the solicitous with Wisdom's Oracle and the Treasures of Art by every one acquirable and by most admired But the Hoil or Chaos presents unto us a subject matter as yet indigested when macerated mingled or jumbled together and such we are to consider it in the Act of Fermentation when nothing but darkness had its Region in the Deep nor did any thing appear upon the Face of the Waters until Darkness by the Divinest was utterly separated by the glorious Beam of the Majesty of Light for till then the Stars roll'd not in their Orbs nor did the Fluctuating Ocean move its Vital Pulse till actuated by the Law of its Soveraign Maker which daily remonstrates the Flux of the Ocean Nor till then did the Earth nor the Barren Mountains know any thing of the Law of Life and Vegetation Nor was there any Prolifick Vertue or propagating Quality hitherto as yet incorporated into them when at once the Fountains of the great Deeps broke up out of whose
food but the Windows of Heaven were set open to refresh and gratifie their thirsty appetite And thus the Creation was unacquainted with fear whiles our Ancestor stood in a state of Innocency and had for ever so remain'd without contradiction by authority of the Text had not Sin struck out the Character of simplicity The timerous Hare fled not then for fear nor did the Cunney shelter her self in the burrough The Hind calv'd naturally without corruscations claps of thunder were then no help to disburden her Nor did the Bear lick her Cubs into shape or form for in the beginning was no deformity The Pellican in those days I perswade my self pickt not those wounds in her tender breast infeebling her self to relieve her young ones Nor did the Ostridge conceal her Eggs dreading or fearing the crush of the Elephant Nor can I hardly perswade my self in these halcion days that the Swan as now sang a lacrimy to her Funeral nor the Phenix fire her Vrn to generate her Species Aligators surely in the minority of time were not so ravenous as to prey upon Passengers Nor did the Crocadile dissemble his tears to moisten the Funerals of his fellow Creature The Plover I discover flew then with the Tassel and the Pheasant I fancy kept flight with the Falcon. Nor did the Partridge know Engin nor Noosie-thread nor dreaded nor feared he the flight of the Goshawk Nor can I think otherwise than to say in those days the Lark was any time dared with the Hobby Surely Nature in those days was divinely exercised to preserve in Unity and unite in Harmony the Creatures God had blest in this blessed Creation because then to know no other Law but that of Sympathy which is naturally of kind but so alienated now and in a sense so degenerated as if no other Law was ever established Now the Generations past and our worthy Ancestors as the vertuous in this Age will labour to abolish this unnatural antipathy if when mutually to strengthen one another in the doctrine of Christianity which ought to be the standard among the pious in profession lest peradventure we relinquish our soveraign health so draw on our heads the Curse of Disease For to fly from Sanity to seek a cure in Sickness is to run head-long into the Water to preserve our selves from drowning In the beginnings of time as it was of old no noise of oppression allarm'd the Land nor dreaded any man the sence of invasion Then it was that priviledges were as sacred as life and the whole Creation seem'd all in common Ianus I fancy liv'd not in those days when the inside was made legible and intelligible by the outside Modesty and innocency were then alamode and simplicity with piety the newest dress For Heaven was pleas'd then to dwell upon Earth but Earth must now be rarified into Heaven God then immediately converst the Creature as by Mediation Christ interceeds the Father And were it not that Christ is our Saviour and Advocate we should be left without a Plea and Sentence denounc'd beyond dispute against us But Christ is risen in whom we hope to rise and lost Adam is restor'd by the Redeemer of the World So that what Adam lost on the one hand in Paradise Christ our Mediator has redeemed on the other Thus was the Beast and the Cattle made and thus every Creature made after its kind knew no other Law than the Law of kind for instinct of kind was naturally inated and ingrafted into all as into one and if so it were impossible for the Creature to degenerate where a command as hitherto was never violated Then it was that the Divinity of the Majesty of God most splended and gloriously shin'd on the Creation for how could it be otherwise when the beauty of the Creator like a new risen Star reflected on the Creature In Edens fair Field no Brambles grew nor was sterility known in her borders The Trees then lookt big because burd'ned with Fruit and their blushing heads bowed down themselves to the courteous hand that endeavoured to reach them The Earth knew nothing but fulness and plenty since every thing was supplied with prolifick Vertue and nourish'd in it self by the primar cause Nature directs the ends of Germination No Cankers nor Caterpillars bred out of putrefaction nor were Northern blasts injurious to any thing nor was there any fatal stroke of Diseas for every thing stood in its primitive purity and Death was out-lawed and Sin an Exile or at leastwise a rerrour unknown or unthought of nor do I err when to say at that time uncreated O blessed Creation because God had blest it from the beauteous Ray and Beam of Himself Whose radient Morning could scarce raise a blush before Titan was ready to unvail his face Whose pleasures were boundless because then unlimited for excess and intemperance were strangers in her Courts And whose Garden full frought with Flowers and Aroma's flourish'd with encrease since hitherto the Serpent had not tainted the Fruit. And the Earth of it self brought forth in abundance whose Womb was the Storehouse and Factory of Treasures Gold grew in Ophir as naturally in those days as Lead is drawn up in the Peek of Derby-shire And Cattle by kind were raised and encreased as putrefactive Excrements convert into Insects But I cease not to wonder since thy Works are so wonderful and to admire thy ways because so miraculous Thus Heaven and Earth were seemingly united and the Creation bended no Knee to any Government save that of its Soveraign Lord and Maker Nor was any thing made that knew any Lord excepting the Lord of Heaven and Earth Nor had the Creator as yet made man a King or Vice-Roy of the Creatures in the Creation All the World all this while was but one Common-Weal and the Tree of Life in the midst of the Garden and nothing as hitherto that God had created had tasted the bitter effects of Death Oblessed and sacred Government upon Earth when Governed by the Royal Law of Heaven which certainly had remained in that blessed State had not Sin by consent eclips't and defac'd it almost to extinguish this beautiful Aurora But let 's tack about now and begin to examine the genuine nature and complication of Animals together with the natural composition of Man whom we find at this day complicated of Elements of all which he consists if when to consider his material parts And as Adam was abstracted from the Womb of the great World so was Woman her self an abstract from him whose Soul as an Astrum or an Essence Royal is no where to be found in the Texture of the Universe Wherefore we have considered Adam super-natural whose Creation to me seems a small incarnation as Montanus says as if God in this Work had multiplied Himself And tho' Adams Original keep not time with the Creation however we are Children of Adams Generation But the World because daily fill'd with revolution ever since the
this was a token of Love to the Creation when God daily renewed his blessings upon the Creature For the blessing upon Adam was by divine appointment transferred to succession upon Adam's Generation which afterwards in time perverted through corruption by a passive neglect in Adams Posterity Now as every good thing is the Gift of God and since whatever God gives is certainly good the Fruit of Paradice could be no otherwise than good because the Gift of God that gave it and the Fish in the Sea and the Fowl in the Air which God gave unto Adam were supreamly good So that every thing in the Creation and created being had the tincture and sweetness proceeding from God who through Wisdome ordain'd it and by Providence maintains it the consequence therefore must needs be good Yet above all the blessings that ever God gave us was in giving unto us himself in his Son the glorious Mystery and Revelation of God which Gift of God was greater than the World and was the Gift of him that gave himself for the World. To all the Creatures in the Creation God bid them be fruitful and in multiplying multiply and replenish the Earth But in Adam peculiarly as in a Divine Garden-Plot God sowed there the Seed of Everlasting Life from whence by cultivation and the Goodness of God he might expect to reap an ever-living Crop for the Seed was the Seed of Eternal Life and not the effects of Sin and Dead Works No Brambles grew up in this heavenly Vintage whereof God himself was the Vine-roon This is the new and the holy Ierusalem wherein Paul may Plant and Apollo Water yet if the Sons of Adam be barren Sciens how can they produce this soveraign Fruit without the heavenly Dews of the Son of God. Adam may multiply and replenish the Earth yet if wanting the blessing of God his Benefactor what profits it To be good therefore is to be like unto God and likeness in every thing creats love since every thing naturally loves its like and this love in Man is the abstract of God in as much as God is Love original Whatever goodness therefore shines in Man is really a derivative from God himself So that should we trace the dimensions of Adam with the extent of his Monarchy how large his Commission runs over the Earth and the Ocean it would be endless for his limitation was boundless the Fowl of Heaven knew no Lord but Adam and the Fish in the Sea no Soveraign but himself and every created thing that had breath and moved and every moving thing that breathed and was created had no Supream nor Superintendent but Adam For Adam as a Star shin'd then upon Earth and made great by him that 's all goodness and greatness was blest in his Posterity and glorious Nativity or heavenly Birth since two Divine Natures shin'd splendidly in him For God had implanted both himself and his Son to make Adam beautiful as himself is glorious the nature of the one was to live and never die but the nature of the other was to die to live This seems a Paradox I 'll therefore explain it That Power that lives and never dies is the Divinity of the Majesty of God when the Almighty before the Creation divinely calculated the Nativity of Life for God said in himself let us now make man like unto our self in our similitude let us make him which likeness or similitude was uncapable of death consequently of diminution or division of parts because the similitude of God himself for God breathed into Adam the breath of Life and he became a living soul who therefore so vain precipitant and idle as to imagine the Breath of God can extinguish Time shall wear out and Gerations walk off and Death it self become an Exile and all things terminate and drop into decay but the Breath of God which is that illuminating light that enlightens the World and the Soul of Man when that glorious light shall co-unite with darkness which is altogether improbable and utterly impossible then shall that hidden life God breathed into Adam be capable of death and not before So that two Lives liv'd at once in our Ancestor a created Life and a Life regenerate a created Life as from a heavenly Birth which sprung Originally from the Womb of Eternity and because made like to the likeness of his Maker it gave him Victory to triumph over Sin putting into his custody the secrets of Life and placing in his hands the Keys of Death So that he knew nothing but absolute freedome and unprohibited the use of the whole Creation one Tree only by the Divinest excepted in which God had placed a peculiar property fit only for himself in wisdome to know God therefore imposed his commands upon Adam not to taste thereof lest peradventure he die The other Life was that of Regeneration which is Christ incarnate God in the Creature this Life liv'd invisibly before the Creation and is that hidden Life in Christ manifest by the Apostle Christ in you the hope of Glory Which remains a mystery to this very day as in former Ages a secret to our Ancestors which Life is the Power of God to Salvation and was in the beginning with God himself and it was God and was made Flesh and by the Will of God dwelt among men This is that Word that spake in the beginning and moved in the Patriarchs our Ancestors to speak that liv'd immaculately in the blessed Virgin that was made Flesh and dwelt among men that bore our infirmities and was Crucified at Ierusalem that in spight of Death took captivity captive and in despite of Hell captivated Death and which also is that Eternal Word that now is ever was and for ever shall be to convince the World of Sin Impenitency Incredulity and Ingratitude which Monster of a Sin is worse than Witchcraft and tho' a Witch be superscrib'd a Rebel in Physicks yet reversing the Point a Rebel is a Witch in Politicks The one because acting against the Law of Nature but the other because striving against Order and Government But God gave unto Adam a Charter Royal that was sign'd and seal'd with those glorious Characters of Sun Moon and Stars and all the Host of Heaven to witness to it This was that great and superlative Grant that God gave unto Adam when he placed him in Paradice and wherewith to refresh him he gave him every Herb and of every Tree that was burd'ned with Fruit whereof he might eat and live before him These Royal Priviledges God gave unto Adam and Heavens Benefactor confirm'd them unto him Now Adam may freely eat and live or he may eat and assuredly die for Life and Death stand as it were in a poiz and because to our Protoplast seemingly mingled they seemingly presented one single Existence as if Property and Quality were intirely one 't is true one Mantle overshadowed both till God out of compassion made more visible discoveries
Royalty at the Eye as having some blind Iurisdiction in the Pores For this were to measure Magical Positions by the Superficial Strictures of common Philosophy Whose Assertors too confident of the Principles of Tradition labour not to understand what others speak but to make others speak what they themselves understand For it is in Nature as appears in Religion some are still hammering and fashioning of old Elements but seek not the Eutopia that lies beyond them This Body therefore let 's consider it the Temple and the Soul that 's within it the Sanctum Sanctorum for the Majesty to dwell in Which if so this Earth must be rarified to make a pure Heaven and Heaven must be purified before the Divinest will inhabit within it Great and Iust therefore is the Original Good whose Incomprehensible Beauty and Divine Majesty neither the Heavens nor the Earth nor the Orbs nor the Ocean nor the expatiated Abyss can any ways contain him Which certainly to know is Speculum Sapientiae scraw'd out in the fair Frontespiece of the beautiful Creation as also in that Divine Manuscript of Holy Writ where the Patriarchs and the Prophets are Marginal Notes and the Holy Men of God with our pious Ancestors the lively Records and divine Remembrancers of the Sacred Oracles of the Majesty of Truth Thus far the Ark of the Covenant travelled and thus far the Talmudists transported themselves but some of the Cabalists went some degrees farther when they met with Christ and his Twelve Apostles yet could they not see the great Messiah But Gabriel the Angel salutes the Blessed Virgin with Hail Mary full of Grace blessed art thou among the Daughters of Women For the Holy of Holies shall overshadow thee with Beauty and thou shalt conceive and bear a Child and he shall be called the Son of God. John Baptist also he confirms the Miracle who when Jesus with him coming forth of the Water the Heavens themselves most gloriously opened and the Holy Ghost divinely descending like a Dove rested the Glory of the Majesty upon him and then was there a Voice heard from the Divinest This is my Son my beloved Son let the Nations hear him Now to the Jews this became a stumbling-block as to some of the Rabbies a Rock of offence but to the Gentiles that sat in the Suburbs of Darkness and the Scriptures tell us in the Shadow of Death the most glorious Mystery of the Revelation of God and the everlasting Gospel was preached unto them So that from these two eminent and most sacred Primordials the one of the Law and the other of the Gospel Religion or something like it took its native Original yet so strangely masqueraded disfigured and disguised that were not a Man well assured what it was it would be found difficult to resolve what to call it And thus the Sun Heavens major Luminary when because at once falling upon several Angles represents the Light in various forms So Christianity though a familiar Appellation yet admits it of such Variety in its progress and peregrination because when to mingle it self with all sorts of Professions that Professors themselves have been puzled how to rate it whiles the noble Berean searches the Scriptures and as the Scriptures manifestly testifie of Christ so Christ himself saith they testifie of him The great Oracle therefore and the Miracle of Faith is Christ himself and Christ is God From whence the Mystery of our Eternal Salvation the blessed Regeneration and the spiritual Birth that internally breaths in every pious Believer is Christ in us the hope of Glory the Sovereign Revealer of the Wisdom of God whose Light is the Beauty of the Majesty of Light that enlightneth every one coming into the World and is our saving and our sanctifying Light before Time had a Being God blessed for ever Thus in brief I present you with a Sacred Summary of my pious Conceptions of the Scriptures of Truth divulg'd to the World as a Treasure of Mysteries calculated for the Assiduous and only such whose Integrity and Fidelity internally shine forth as their Faces externally in a Glass respond and answer a due and exact Proportion From whence I conclude this Philosophical Axiom As are the Writings of Moses the Standard of Truth that God the Creator has by a Royal Law imposed upon Nature eternally to operate the Vniversal Spirit therefore is but One in all her Operations viz. in the Fire to influence in the Air to impregnate in the Water to germinate and in the Earth to vegetate Where note The Elements consequently the Principles were divinely preordained by the Sovereign Power of him that 's Supream who constituted Nature to conserve the Creation or solemnly I declare I understand it not Nor would I be thought either rash or unreasonable to reassume a Priviledge in what I distribute but as Words are my own whiles yet in my Mouth and every bodies else when unconfined so let them be and have a charitable Reception when to run their Risque in the Worlds great Lottery because when to fall under various Conceptions yet if so happy to meet with the Ingenious in Science meaning such as dread and honour their Creator and imitate Nature in her solitary Operations which every expert Artist and experienced will do provided his Inquisitions be after the Truth to such and such only I dedicate my Labors together with my Endeavours to Wisdoms elaborate Shrine that with vertuous Inclinations they may seek after Discoveries and the abstruse Tracts of their Friend Philanthropus RABBI MOSES IN the beginning God created the Heaven and the Earth Which directs me to contemplate this World is a great Machine or an Engine-royal adapted for Motion by the Power of Him that created the Creation that not so much as an Atom can move or stir save only by a derivative Vertue from him that thro Wisdom and Providence gave a Being to the Whole who knows all the Parts and Particles of his Work. How can he then be thought ignorant of its Motion or in any thing be deficient when he that made the World knows how to influence the hidden Springs and Parts thereof he knows for what End and Duration he design'd its Motion and the time when all things shall pass away So that when the Divinest withdraws the Springs of Life viz. his supporting Providence from any Creature in the Creation or from the Elements or the whole World it self it must sink into a state of Inactivity consequently become a meer Annihilation Now That Heaven and Earth are Corelates who doubts it That they sprung spontaneously from one Principium who disputes it And that they had in themselves by Divine Ordination Ends and Beginnings most properly adapted and insinuated into them who so Impious and Atheistical to suspect it That the World had a Beginning is manifest That Eternity preceded Time is most manifest And that every End terminates in its own proper Beginnings nothing more manifest Every End therefore
it Darkness since separabel from the beauteous Beam of Light and such is Sin and such also is Death since by Adam's Transgression who consenting to Sin violated Gods Divine and Regal Command so wounded himself with his own Sting Death and Sin therefore Van Helmont calls Accidents or some impious malignity that lurk'd about the matter whereby to lessen Light and abscond or ecclipse its beautiful Lustre which when removed by the Divine Grace of God the Body then seems to appear Celestial Nor can it be otherwise since if when to consider there 's no difference nor distinction betwixt Heaven and Earth save Clarity of the one and Impurity of the other and this is a State we daily discourse of nay we hourly wish for 't and long to enjoy it yet so great is our Zeal to these ambiguous uncertainties that we dare not trust our selves to entertain it And because so adhering to the World and its allurements kind answering kind whose Luscious Breast seems sweet and pleasant and whose surprizing Charms luxuriously satiating we gulp down Avarice and drink down Oppression so like Diana with the Ephesians cry Gain is sweet thus tainting our selves become infectious to others for a stinking Breath tho loathsome to the Company yet is it to it self a natural perfume so Sin and Impiety in its habitual dress tho ugly seems amiable and tho faetid smells fragrant and knows no impediment Thus Paul by Faith fought with Beasts at Ephesus and Philanthropus with Monsters in the Desarts of America 'T is true and as true as the Sun 's the great Luminary whose luminous Body illustrates the Creation yet is not the Sun that Soveraign Light that adorned the Throne before the Creation when the Divinest said Let there be Light and immediately the Light of it self sprung up which Light by his Wisdom he called Day and dignified it also with the Title of Good nor could it be otherwise than good in the Abstract since the Divinest had called it Good and because proceeding from the Fountain of Good its Original can be no less than God. Now the Day had its Original as has the Sun its Aurora and the Sun tho the Major Luminary of the Universe whose refulgent Ray illustrates the Creation by Rapidity Circulating and Patrolling about it yet is it by Wisdom and the Guidance of God another Aurora of the increated Light which never ceaseth invisibly to shine when the Sun withdraws from our occular view as imaginarily supposed towards the Western Fountains whiles this pure Light never ceaseth to shine in the Heart of Man and the Throne of the Majesty tho to the World and ignorant it appear invisible and because too sublime for the weak Vision of Sight whereby a dimness seems to overshadow it as gazing too much at the natural Sun in some measure astonisheth the Purlue of Sight so the Soveraignty of the Glory of the Son of God whose excessive brightness seems to cause a blindness when as indeed it 's the Purity and Soveraignty of Light we are therefore to reduce it under this consideration that nothing that 's impure can behold what 's pure nor Carnality partake of what is Spirituous There is therefore this difference betwixt Natural and Supernatural as also betwixt Celestial and Terrestrial things that all Spirituous Bodies can pass the Purgatory of Fire without any detriment or diminution of parts when as Corporeals if but to touch the Flames are at once in a Moment destroy'd and consumed Purification of Bodies must therefore necessarily precede whereby to dignifie and make them Celestial Natural things therefore are in one distinct state but Spiritual things are found in another and by how much our Nature is made more spirituous by so much are we nearer to the Nature of God. And as the Sun shines naturally more bright and distinctly more pure than our Culinary Fires how infinitely brighter and much more pure is the Majesty of that Light that invisibly shines from the Son of God But our new Philosophers or Erra Paters are much of the Cast with Figure-flingers that presume to step into the Prerogative of Prophets and antedate events in Configurations which is a Consequence I perswade my self of as much Reason and for ought I know to as great Satisfaction as to see the Auxiliaries draw out and exercise and the Spectators to read their designs by their postures But I proceed to discourse the Firmament of Heaven the Fluctuating Ocean also and the Waters in the Creation which presents to our consideration matter of Admiration consequently a suitable Subject for every Philosopher if sedately to contemplate their admirable separation when God divided the Waters from the Waters and the Firmament of Heaven stood stationary between them which denotes those rarified and invisible Waters Moses points at above us are an Act of Faith because of Invisibility whilst these below us are demonstrable to us which Argument as formerly confirms our Philosophy that the likeness of that which is remotely above is also beneath co-inhabiting below to work the Miracle of one single thing so that the same Act of Power and Providence that made them separable made them also invisible as by the Law of demonstration these are made visible to us But what are these Waters these invisible Waters that surmounting the Aether and because above us perpetually fly our sight what are they and what were they in the Fiat of the Creation more than the pure and spirituous part separated from impurity and all aquosity whiles the pinguous moist faecula and indigested Vapours stifly adhere to the visible form which by reason of inconcocted crudities and indigestions when celebrated to warmth lie fermenting in themselves and are the daily cause of Natural Production animating and exerting the Earth to Vegetation These Invisible Waters therefore above the Firmament must of necessity be a Rarefaction of Air and the Firmament because intermediating betwixt them remonstrates it Celestial and a clarified Earth For if to consult the Creation and created Beings we are to consider them in a two fold Capacity the Visibility of the one and the Invisibility of the other Elementary Bodies and Bodies Celestial where note sublunar things are influenced by Celestials as are Celestials governed by super Celestials As the Sun in his progress because ruling the Day is by Divine appointment the Parent of Vegetation So has the Moon her Nocturnal Government whereby she also operates the Ocean influencing Fluidity and the Female Sex Nor are the Stars and Constellations deficient or destitute whereby not to effect and influence Inferiors so that a perpetual motion is continually maintained and a constant rotation perpetually continued otherwise the Compound would admit of decay and a defect in any one part of the Creation would inevitably draw on an inconveniency upon the whole Thus the great Frame and Fabrick of the Creation was ranged into a most excellent and beautiful order which the Creator foresaw in the Idea
Sea that â—o amazâ—ment it shines like a Pot of Oyntment and whose magnitude amazes his fellow Creatures Whose Empire is the spacious and bottomless Ocean but himself a Monarch over all in the deeps whose Subjects are the several Clases of Natatiles that pay tribute to him with the loss of their Lives So that what to say of this prodigious Creature I know not nor is any Pen capable to discourse his concealments or fathom the unfathomed depths that conceal him Is not he one of the wonderful Mysteries of the ways of God Whose shining paths discover his ways and whose motion terrifies the eyes of his beholders â— Creature he is that lives void of fear and is as Iob says a King over all the Children of Pride Leviathan therefore if thought requisite to describe him I shall rally him under three several distinctions and the rather because to make him yet more obvious give me leave to rumidge the Ocean and dress up my method whereby to illustrate him in the following order First then by Tradition we entitle him Grampus when because to consider him in his prestine Minority but successively in his Peregrination he assumes to himself that dignity and magnitude that some call him Iubartas When in process of time and becoming yet more formidable some are pleased to superscribe him the Whale or Leviathan whose motion upon the slippery tracts of the Ocean represents him as it were a floating Island And whose excessive bulk and incredible bigness is enough to astonish every beholder when otherwise to consider him on the silty Owse his own weight peradventure hazards to sink him whereby he becomes a prey to the Merchant or otherwise must lie till death release him But of this admirable and eminent Subject there are some so precipitant to preconjecture Iob too copious whiles othersome of a contrary opinion have determined him too brief and altogether concise when because as to their apprehension not to enlarge enough upon him wherefore to reconcile them which is not without difficulty the ignorant and unlearned think he has said too much when by reason of their ignorance they cannot understand him but to the Wise and more Judicious he has said too little and the rather in regard they 'r desirous of knowledge for Wisdome is always known of her Children But Iob that humane Oracle of Learning and Eloquence and as learnned as any man in the study of Astronomy has given such eminent and convincing Encomiums with such solid Arguments of this admirable Creature that every description save that of his own strikes a Discord in the Readers ear whose Mute I confess my self to be and am unwilling therefore to attempt to encounter what neither my Language nor Experience can boast of otherwise than that I have seen this formidable Creature sporting himself in the vast wide Ocean yet this wont priviledge but rather precaution me with reverend submission to a sedate taciturnity and to affix no more Arguments upon this invincible Subject But rather with my Author lay my hand on my mouth and remembring the battle do so no more Since therefore to consult him without any compeer and a Monarch of such a magnitude and vast Dominions should we rumidge all the Elements for a Mate to match him none but his own is found to contain him Wherefore we represent him the Majesty of Mortals whose search we relinquish to correspond with inferiours such are the Porpus the Bottle-Nose and the Shark the Selk Boneto and the Albicore the Moura or Sea Serpent with the Conger Bass Remora Torpedo and the American Snite There is also the Turbet Scate Dolphin Grooper and Cavalla besides the Sturgeon Salmon Trout Lucit Mullet Umbar Barble Tenche c. and thousands more in Salts and Freshes Moreover there are Shell-fish as the Turtle or Tortoise Conct Lobsters Oysters Crabs Cockles Mussels Craw-fish Prawns and Shrimps but these are arm'd all over Another Brigade are Alegators Crocadiles Guianas Bevers Otters and Manitees with many other but such are Amphibious whom I care not to converse with Living Creatures therefore and such as move and have their motion by the mediums of Water are our Subject matter And that God created every invidual made it to live and gave it motion is the strength of my Assertion And that the Waters were the cause of their Life and Motion is the Argument of the Text but that God gave Life and Motion to the Waters that gave Life and Motion to the Creatures therein is my positive and final Conclusion Life then as naturally attends the Creation as the Ray of Light follows the Sun. Nor can any Life issue but what flows from Light as Light it self flows from the Divine Fiat which immaculate Light sprung up from Eternity as Eternity it self shines from the Majesty But since the determinate and original end of Water was not generally understood its nature and office but imperfectly considered its wonderful Vertue and Operation intelligeable only to such whom Wisdome and Nature have duly Educated in God's great School where nothing is taught without wonder and astonishment so that all I can offer relating to this admirable Subject is little more than to say nothing since if I speak any thing I say too much and silence peradventure would better become me rather than so publickly declame and devulge to the World these my Notions and it may be by some thought barren apprehensions that like a Chase in Arra's figurates only the design but wants real power of Life to prompt forward into Motion Which implies such Phaenonima's discover nothing where the genuine truth of any thing admits of a doubt and who will be so presumptous to determine possitives by his own own hesitant and imperfect Conclusions But the Sea as one great and copious Body is acted only by the spirit of Life that in the beginning inspired the Creation and all the Rivers and Rivulets that fluctuate in Islands consequently all those that spread themselves on the Continent what are they but such and so many Meanders running up and down in every Angle representing the Arms Boughs and Branches of this prodigious and Miraculous Creation whose Trunck or Bole is the Ocean it self whose Radix or Root in the Nonage of Time lay conceal'd among the admirable Mysteries of the Creator So that after what manner the Fountains and the Rivers with the Springs and Rivulets became incipid whiles the Ocean it self is impregnated with Salt is another Mystery till serioussy to consider the Quellem or Sand and the multiform variety of Soils in the Earth as also to examine the Bottles of Heaven the burdned and impregnated Clouds that fall and daily distil to replenish the Earth with Aerial Spirits and Prolifick Vertue These also were once one Saline substance when in the great Mass or Volumn of the Ocean whose Texture was alienated in the act of Separation because rarified and purified by Mediums of Air which more properly admits of