respect of Man we may so apprehend them without offence because otherwise Gods Omnipotency cannot clearly be conceived by mans capacity But as to these words made framed and formed as they are notionally dist inct from Created they may be thus considerable viz. made into a Vegetative intimated by the dust of the Earth framed into a Sensitive life intimated by the breath of Lile and formed into a rational life intimated by a Living Soul so that in this notion we may apprehend also our similitude to God by a Trinity in Unity And that these words ought to be distinctly understood appears from the words in the second Chapter verse 2. And God rested from all his works which he had creaded and made and likewise in the fourth verse These are the Generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created in the day that God made the earth and the heavens And the words framed and formed are used in other places in different senses but I conceive the word made is most proper to be used here because it is onely applyed to Creatures of the greatest Eminency and that nine times 1. To the firmament 2. To the two great lights 3. To the stars and four times in the second and third verses of this Chapter where the word is exprest by way of Enumeration of what was created and made and then it is twice more named by change of the number as in the 27th verse Let us make and in the 18th verse of the second Chapter I will make Let us make denoting either the Trinity or Angels or the composition of his Qualities assimilating God And I will make denoting his peculiar care But however here 't is said The Lord God made man which are plural appellations though the verb be singular so that Let us make and the Lord God made do answer each other as to the Trinity or what concerns the eminency of mans being made Man If David ask'd the question § 4. Lord what is man so many hundred years after he was made and answered himself that man is altogether vanity or is nothing and his days as a shadow what can we imagine man to be before he was made he was nothing as the word Creation implys and being made he was made of little more then nothing for he was made of the dust of the earth and yet still continuing in this Compact of dust he is still but vanity or nothing And so we may Collect from his four names for he is called Adam Enoch Ishe Chebor the first name Adam signifies earth or red earth that seems to have some colour of a substance and yet when we see how changeable it is into other Elements the earth it self is but a momentary something Secondly Enoch which signifies sickness or calamity we feel something of that and yet that vanisheth for pain or calamity may endure for a night but joy cometh in the morning The third is Ishe which signifies crying or laughing both of which are so oft exprest in one wind as the Proverb saith they are scarce distinguishable And for the last Chebor signifying Excellency it is said that man being in honour hath no understanding but is compared to the beasts that perish So that we may well conceive these four words signifie the four Elements of which he is Compacted Adam Earth the grosser part of his body Enoch Water the redundancy of which causeth sickness and deluges of Rhumes Ishe Air from whence allso unds are procreated and Cheber Fire which is the most excellent of all the Elements and so is either common and culinary or supercelestial consisting of Love or au intellect or such properties as belong to an Angelical Nature Of the dust of the ground Man is said to be made of the dust of the ground and in the ninth verse 't is said Out of the ground the Lord God made to grow every tree and verse 19th Out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast c. Out here it is meerly out of the dust of the ground to shew that there was a difference between Man and other Creatures in their making so that by the dust of the ground is to be understood the superficial part of the earth of which man onely was made for all Creatures are said to be made out of the ground but not of the dust of the ground but Man of the dust of the ground or earth Now whither this dust was made by a peculiar omnipotent Calcination or other Rarification is not demonstrated but we may conceive it of the most attenuated part of the earth and therein the more Noble part because capable of the most activity for if we consider our commondust it flies like Atoms over the Surface of the earth oft-times being raised into as many dry Clouds as there are moist and by the co-operation of these two dry and wet those varieties of Naturals and Preternaturals which are so oft showred down upon us and seen among us as Moths and other flies Mice and other Vermine are produced And mostly they are Agile creatures whether we respect their volatile or reptile or aquatick natures which I mention to shew that if the ordinary dust produceth such agile Creatures we may collect that our Creator hath adapted to our more agaile body in relation to our Souls far more agile dust the to other Creatures For the Targum of Jerusalem adds to our honor that we are made ex palvere Sanctuarii i. e. of holy dust differing from all other dusts which should raise this Contemplation in us that as we are not like beasts or other Creatures in our Temperaments they made of the ground that is of the faeces or dregs of the Earth we of the Superficies or of some peculiar sanctify'd dust so ought the habits of our bodies to be sublime and alwaies ascending to an higher sphere and not to be alloyed and turned into various Corruptions And breathed the breath of life § 6. God at first breathed upon the face of the waters this was the first universal Vegetative and Sensitive life and motion which he infused into the Mass of Creation of which Man was also partaker But this breath which God breathed into man was of a higher nature not onely giving life and motion for Man had that by universal breath but by this man became a living Soul And as our bloud within us for all things have a bloud or spirit of the nature of bloud is said to be the Vehicle or Conveyor of the Vegetative or Sensitive life so the Air without us in which is the universal breath may be said to be the Vehicle of that life into us and the spirit or life is the vehicle of our rational life or of that divine Soul which flows into us for God works all things by fit Instruments so that our Soul is conveyed to us by this spirit or breath of life the spirit of life passes by
VOLATILES FROM THE HISTORY OF Adam and Eve Containing Many unquestioned Truths and allowable Notions of several Natures By Sir John Pettus Knight LONDON Printed for T. Bassett at the George in Fleet-street 1674. To the Right Honourable LEISTER DEVEREVX Lord Viscount Hereford My Lord HAving the Honour of being your Neighbour in Suffolk it London and in our Publick Imployments and your Lordship knowing the occasion of my Writing upon this subject affords me some reasons of Dedicating this to your Lordship to shew you how I spent my time when I had any little leisure from business which I seldom neglected persuant to Antoninus advice that if one should ask me at any time what I was thinking I might be able to give an account of some worthy matter and therefore I made Choice of this Story which hath furnish'd me with above an 100 several Subjects which always fed my Thoughts with such safe Varieties that they fenc'd out the Consideration of other troubles which might have perplex'd them My Method of Writing I borrow'd from Malvezzi his Davido persecutato my Extravagant way from Mountaine who in his Essayes undertakes in one Chapter to write of Thumbs and yet not one word of them in all that Discourse for have observ'd in the Countrey that when I forsook the path which would have guided me to the place I design'd and cross'd the Pastures somtimes I started Hares somtimes sprang Partridges or observ'd some curious Plants which pleasures I had never injoy'd if I had confin'd my self to the path yet I kept my Eye on it least I should stray too far and return'd home by it and inliven'd or inrich't my thoughts with the Contemplations of what happen'd by my digressions Possibly these Excursions might have been more excusable to me in my Youth than in my Age but it is a solace to me that I can be yet youthful in my notions and if your Lordship please to peruse these as a Recreation your Lordship will very much Honour My Lord Your Lordships most humble Servant Jo. Pettus The Stationer to the Courteous Reader THere are some Errata's occasion'd by the Indisposition of the Printer for want of Orthography Comma's Conjunctions Parenthesis expunging of needless Adverbs mistakes of Singulars for Plurals which may be amended by the Ingenuity of the Reader upon the intended sense of the Sentence but the most material are viz. PAG. 14. l. 5. read sixteen and l. 18. r. graines p. 18. l. 1. r. Life p. 30. l. 10. r. Undermines and l. 25. r. humid part and l. 28. r. prae-efficient p. 40. l. 21. r. adjectively p. 79. l. 25. r. feminine p. 96. l. 4. r. tunes p. 110. l. 1. r. of p. 125. l. 30. r. are none p. 163. l. 13. r. Jonathan THE HISTORY OF ADAM and EVE Introduction IN the beginning Whilst all we can apprehend was God in the beginning of his manifestation of himself by Parts In the beginning of those Parts from whence we account the beginning of Time In the beginning when that Time was an Emanation of Eternity In the beginning when God afforded us Visibility out of his Invisibility God Created Heaven and Earth And from that Mass of Creation divers other parts were as we may say in respect of their Comparative Excellency also created as it appears Verse the 3. And God said Let there be Light Secondly And God said Let there be a Firmament Thirdly And God said Let the Earth appear Fourthly And God said Let the Earth bring forth grass Fifthly And God said Let there be Lights Sixthly And God said Let the waters bring forth Fowl Seventhly And God said Let the Earth bring forth Cattle So that there was a Septenary or seven Fiats and no more seven being a perfect number And those being done God begins with Man in another Dialect for instead of Let there be God said Let us make Cap. 1. ver 26. Now whether these words Let us are to be understood as more Majestically spoken or an Invocation of the Trinity imployed in the word Elohim Et dixit Dominus angelis mini strantibuscoram eo qui creati sunt die secundo creationis mundi Targ. Hier. or a summoning of Angels or other spiritual Instruments Or Let us that is let the Creatures which I have Created on the five former days together with such a Soul as I shall infuse into Man Let us make Man that is let man be constituted of Light Air Water and Earth and of the Qualities and Virtues of those and other Creatures and of a Soul peculiar to himself yet derivative in some manner from us his Creator and my other Creatures I shall not here dispute but leave it to other voluminous Writers For not onely the Dialect as I said concerning Mans creation is different but it is clear that Moses gives only a Concise Narrative of the things created before Man not imparting to us any circumstances used in their Creation But as to Man he gives a full and ample discourse from the seventh Verse of the second Chapter to the end of the same Chapter being wholly spent in it and indeed is but a Parenthesis proper to be read between the 26 and 27 Verses of the first Chapter the words Let us make Man in the 26 verse being either the Consultative part of Mans Creation or as Gods declarative Resolution so to do and the words in the 27th verse So God created man shews the compleating that deliberation or resolution And therefore I shall begin with those words of the seventh verse Chapter second And the Lord God made as being the beginning of the active part of his Creation and so descant upon that whole second Chapter and that being finished return to the 27th verse of the first Chapter So God created man and then to the 28 and 29 verses with which I shall conclude the first part of these discourses The second part shall begin with the 30th of the first Chapter because it is an Induction to the offences of the Serpent and thence pass to the whole third Chapter to which shall be added so much of the 4th and 5th Chapters as shall make the History and variety of discourses concerning Adam and Eve intire and pleasurable to the Reader and I hope without the least offence to the sacred Method or dissatisfaction to any The Notions which I have us'd herein are chiefly from my Notes out of Dr. Waltons Laborious and Learned Polyglotta some parts of St. Augustine Pererius Sir Walter Rawleigh Dr. Donne Paulus Lovatius Crook and some others cited on the Margin and if I have hit upon any others veins which I have not cited it is the error of my Memory not of my Gratitude so that till I know them I may be excus'd and if the Style and Method be somewhat above or out of the usual road it may be ascribed to my Education which hath been not like a Pedant but a Gentleman The Text of the first
considerable is the Nicety between good and evil things many times good things prove poisons by their ill use and Poisons or ill things prove sometimes the best Antidotes Cap. 3. Ver. 12. And the man said § 23. The woman thou gavest to be with me she gave me of the tree to eat and I did eat Disobedience is the Nurse of Ingratitude and Ingratitude of Impudence Thus Adam instead of thanks for his Meet helper implicitly reviles God who gave her not considering that she was given rather to help then advise or if to advise yet he had the deliberative part in himself to do or not to do as he thought most prudent but without debating that with God he with impudence told God as it were that it was Gods fault to give her to him and since he had given her and that he was to shew all expressions of kindness unto her who had recommended it to him he thought himself obliged rather to observe her then him and thereupon without any more circumstance or excuse heard She gave it me and I did eat Cap. 3. Verse 13. And the Lord God said to the woman § 24. What is this that thou hast done God said to Adam Where art thou though he knew where he was and to the Woman What hast thou done though he knew what yet neither of these kind Questions could beget a civil or confessive answer but the Man said the Woman gave it to me and the Woman said the Serpent beguiled her but neither of them though they knew they had done the fact would acknowledge their own disobedience in doing it for then possibly God would have raised some Antidote from that or some other tree without a future Saviour to have Cured the infection of the Evil and to have fixt the benefit of the good But she ungrateful and Impudent as he Replies that the Serpent beguiled her and she did eat And the Woman said § 25. The Serpent beguiled me There need no inquiry into the History of Nature to know what kind of Serpent that was which beguiled Eve when as we see every Man is daily subject to be tempted by the same or the like Serpent Pride is this Serpent that tempts us to Ambitious actions Covetousness this Serpent that tempts us to injure others Luxury this Serpent that tempts us into forbidden Embraces Wine this Serpent that steales into our veines with arguments of Collour and Taste Improving the spirits and solacing our dejections until at last it so Captivates our Reason that when God asks where we are we cannot answer or what we have done we can only say with Eve The Serpent hath beguiled us Certainly it is a great punishment on our Natures that we cannot Judge or if we do that we connot refrain from Excuses and make those offences which in themselves are none For Ambition rightly placed is a vertue Covetousness Frugality Luxury if derived from the Constitution is but a more natural desire Wine a Comforter He is happy who can carry a Balance alwayes in his Mind to weigh his intentions and actions And what is thought or done not to be too Censorious of himself or others For there are certain positives wherein our Judgments connot err and therein to say the Serpent beguiled is no justifiable Excuse but in things indifferent Ecel 5. Solomons Rule is very good My Son let not thy mouth accuse thy self of sin make not those things sins which are more and Commit not those which Certainly are Cap. 3. 14. The Lord said unto the Serpent § 26. The Serpent is call'd the subtilest Beast yet doubtless every Creature hath a proportionable understanding of Gods voice Psal 19. The Heavens declare or speak the Glory of God which he first Communicates to them the Firmament speaks his handy work one day tells another what is to be done the next one night certifie another what deeds are done therein there is neither speech nor Language but their Voice is heard through the world Every individual thing either in its operation or virtual Communication speaks that to others which God speaks to them For speech is not only that of which the Ear participates but the other senses do as it were heare it equally with the Ear. We see the flowers speak their various colours this flower says I am Red another Yellow a third Mixt and we do but repeat their speech in saying what Colour they bear And besides what individuals do afford our senses they also administer discourses to our Reason and Judgment how this or that is to be virtually applyed from one we get a letter from another a syllable from a third a word from a fourth a sentence from a fifth an effectual speech And all Creatures though we know not how they understand their proportion of speech which God speaks to them yet they understand it and only Man hath the disputative part granted to him for though the Serpent was the subtilest Beast yet God would hear none of his subtile replications or Evasions But God said to Adam Where art thou And Who told thee that thou wert naked And Hast thou eaten c. To which three questions Adam gave three answers Thou gavest me the Woman she gave it me and and I did eat Then he put but one Question to Eve What hast thou done To which she made two answers The Serpent beguiled we And I did eat to shew that she also was Limited in her tongue though she would give two answers to one question So that by this Text we see that Man may enjoy a certain discourse or ratiocination with God for this was after Adams fall but the Woman a very little But other Creatures are Subject to his Voyce without ratiocinating for without Answer from the Serpent The Lord said to the Serpent Because thou hast done this § 27. c. It is not sufficient to refrain from Evil our selves but we are not to tempt others to it either by precept suggestion or Example That this Serpent had a Cunning wit the Text shews that he was Beautiful some Writers affirm Whether he eat or not let Commentators agree for if considered as a Serpent what good was the knowledg of good to him if Considered as the Devil the eating could not add to his Knowledge of goodness because he knew more in his Primitive perfection then could be added to him by secondare meanes However we may believe either by remembrance of his former Condition or by eating this he knew goodness notionally not practically but the Evil he not only knew but tempted Eve to the Knowledge of it And this by his subtilty and Beauty two such temptations to that sex that their vertues must seem to resist the harmony of Nature by resisting of them especially when they meet in one Persorn And herein methinks Eve was more excusable then Adam for here was a Lovely Serpent a delicate Fruit pleasing to the Eye delightful to
Exorbitancies which grew up with the exuberancy of the world Besides we see even in our times to what great Ages Men and Women have arived even to two and three hundred years though Climes constitutions vitiations by food and other inordinacies do distemper that harmony of nature by which our forefathers did subsist Now nine hundred and thirty years want but seventy of a thousand and a thousand are but as a span the span is but what it can grasp and why should we labour to grasp that which whether we hold or not is equal at present but disadvantagious not only in the riddance of Anxieties but also procrastinating those happy Expectations which even Common Reason guides us to believe For though there is no mention made in our Translations how Adam was disposed of after he died yet the Targum of Jerusalem says Mortuus est collectus fuit e medio Mundi And it is sufficient he was taken out of the midst of the troubles and anxieties of the world And there can be no doubt but that he who was imprisoned here nine hundred and thirty years for his offence and had worn the badges of mortality in the skins of dead Beasts for his cloathing and digg'd his grave so oft in cultivating the Earth as a reward for his frugality and industry after his death enjoyed such quiet felicities as I hope will be given to all such as shall live and die here in a clear submission to our Creators Will. And he died § 55. We read of three sorts of death the Violent which befel Abel the Natural Adam and the Transmutative Enoch yet these distinctions relate only to the manner for death is the same to all and as the Poet saith there are a thousand ways to it If it be forced 't is still a death or transmuted which is a kind of insensible force it is still a death or according to the extent of Nature when she or the soul being weary of the confusions of this life retires and hides it self from performing any further offices to the body it is still a death And though Adam is said to live nine hundred and thirty years which is three hundred thirty nine thousand six hundred thirty six days in which I compute the Bissextile days and if those days be accounted by hours and those hours by minutes yet it may truly be said that so many minutes as he lived so many minutes he died for the Casualities which occasion death are as many as those which attend our lives and therefore he which lives longer than another passeth by only so many more Casualties his life is not the longer though prolonged because death hath still an Interest in every prolongation and is so clearly concerned that 't is not to be judged who is living or who dying At our Birth we break the Prisons of Death and lie at the mercy of Midwives or other Keepers for our Evasions in our Infancy Nurses and Tutors in our Youth our Extravagancies in our riper years our discretion and indiscretion madness and sobriety are equal attendants in Age diseases and infirmities are ready to usher us to the Grave a more severe Prison and yet with little difference for the grave of the womb gives life to us and the other by our death gives life to multitudes of vermine they by Corruption enrich the Earth the Earth by that fertility affords us food that food supports life And so there is a Circulation of Generation and Corruption and those possibilities being in either 't is hard to judge which is living which dying And it is not only thus in Terrestrials but even in Celestials The day dies the night produceth another that dies again And so in those glorious Creatures in the heavens there is also a visible Rotation of living and dying and our life and death is but as night and day And it seems an incivility towards God or rather an affront to his disposure to desire a long life as if we would afford no room to our successors or permit God to be seen by any but our selves in his unexpreffible variations And therefore the most consonant way to our Immortality is to live in a continued mortification For so we shall live by dying and die by living Of Life Death Resurrection and Immortality As also of the Chemistry of Nature operating in our souls and bodies by which they are forced to rejoyn 1 Cor. 15.22 FOr as in Adam all die so in Christ the second Adam all shall be made alive or have resurrection from the dead The joynt operation of mans soul and body is called Life the Cessations of those joynt motions Death The operations and constant exchanges which Nature admits of are perplexities for nothing in life is pleasure but the enjoyment of an equal and contented mind knowing our selves totally or in our particles to be every minute hurled about with the vicissitude of Constitutions the Cessation or at least our want of knowledg what is done in the grave seeming to be our quiet But how far or how long it continues 't is hard to judge seeing our corrupted parts are hourly traversing into various Productions of which we consist and into which we return again But by reason of this Cessation or seeming separation not only of soul and body but of the parts of the body into millions of forms we to support our belief in the union of our parts seek after the progresses and inclinations of other Creatures to theirs notwithstanding their several Contingent obstructions and therefore I think fit to set down several observables And in the first place that Experiment of reviving a Plant out of its ashes is a noble piece of Chemistry Dr. Browns Religio Medici and serves well to this purpose And though such a revived Plant may want some of its Accidents yet the very revivification of it if it gains not a full satisfaction to Immortality yet it affords us a fair testimony of the possibilty of our Resurrection for then all the Accidental defects of nature shall be volatile but the virtues and perfections of nature fixed Indeed if we could find out by art a revivification of Vegetables in all their accidents we should make Immortality too common it is enough if a man can make any experimental inducement to his faith and give an imitation to future perfection The whole Art of Chemistry what is it as I conceive but to dissolve the nature of a Creature and to recollect it again if not into its superfluous accidents yet into a noble Evidence of its virtues And this is done not so much by the force of Arts as by the secret instinct and greediness of its own disposition to unite its scattered nature And that which is worthy of obfervation for our use in this Art is Let the gross body of any Creature be dissolved or dissected into many parts that remaining part which is visible to us after its dissolution