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
after Purgation to rectify and conjoyn and then advance if it could be to a plusquam perfection whereby to imitate Nature as she by president imitates the Creator what admirable thing would the Operator bring forth Wherefore the Apostle he bids you be perfect as your Heavenly Father is also perfect And what can advance to a state of Perfection but that which separates from Sin and Impurity Thus the Heavens are pure and infinitely clarified yet much more pure is he that created them which state to know is never to know Death Wherefore as by imitation some Bodies are made always to live in the Phylosophick World which the Adeptest intitles and superscribes Transmutation but the Theologist in the Super-celestial that of Regeneration And as one is the period of Principles and Elements such also is the other of Corporification leading Death into Captivity and transforming every impure Being into a Celestial Clarity and Purity and the Souls of Righteous Men into endless Glory but this Operation is performable only by the Heavenly Arcanum or Medicament of Life which Sacred Soveraign and Divine Elixir is the Christ of God the Wisdom of the Father to whom devoutly be everlasting Praises And as Christ is called the Light of the World c. Light may properly therefore be asserted the Manifestation of God and the Oracle of his Truth for if what visible Light is or appears unto the Bodily Eye the same but infinitely more glorious is the invisible Light that illuminates the Understanding in the Eye of the Mind The want of Light it 's true makes Man deplorable so is Ignorance of the Mind to be lamented And as Generation that sprang out from Corruption of those things which were esteemed the best so the Light that shines in Man when it becomes eclipst by the shades of Sin how dreadful and dismal is that Darkness As Light therefore of all things is accounted most desirable the want of it to the Mind makes the Man most miserable So of all Ignorance that Ignorance is the worst which hath reference to the most Noble and Sublimest Object and by how much the subject of Knowledge is better by so much is the deprivation of that Knowledge intollerable As any one therefore by putting out a Mans Eyes whereby to intercept him the injoyment of Light is reputed cruel so he that prevents the means of Knowledge is no less if not infinitely more by a Scriptural Authority adjudged condemnable Light therefore because exalted above all Created Beings it confirms it the Standard of Wonder and Admiration whose beauteous Beam displays it self the uncreated Being before the Creation consequently superexcelling all the rest in Dignity but the created luminous Ray of the Sun that strikes the Poles from East to West nay farther its possible could we apprehend it is sacredly held forth as the Almighties Taper whereby to illustrate the Visible World as do's the Light of his Sovereign All-glorious Son invisibly shine in the Souls of Saints to convince the World of Sin and Unbelief And tho Laban usher Leah unto Iacob's Bed by introducing her instead of his beautiful Rachel so every designing Imaginarist do's when describing only exteriour things but states nothing essentially Such I may say dwell meerly in the Face or at the best on the superficial parts of the Body never aspiring after the fulness of Beatitude which Philosophy in my Opinion looks like to a Church that 's drest up with Discipline when wanting sound Doctrine So that if when to consider the exteriour form of complicated mixts shall melt away probably we arrive at the fiery principium whose Elevations lead on to a state Immortal co-uniting us to that invisible Nature that admits not of any thing save Purity intense by the continued ardency of a Pious Devotion As in Operation it 's evident and egregiously true that the Elements themselves assume all Colours before the Beauty of those colours egrede wherefore they begin with Blackness first because the Antecessour and Parent of Putrefaction after it passes thro other middle Colours till at length it arrives at a Celestial Whiteness which then is Air from whence it ascends to a fiery Complexion in which the Power of Art and Dominion of Fire when to speak Aenigmatically is compleatly terminated and beyond which in my Opinion there 's no natural progress And God no sooner divinely said Let there be Light but immediately there was Light so that his Commands were in a moment answered for how soon did the Light spontaneously spring up and amounting aloft fill the Universe with Splendor So that now the Creation became altogether visible and every concealed Treasure that lay hid therein exposed it self unto occular view whereby to discover the Chaos commaserated and Water and Earth by previous digestion without contention or strong ebullitions began of themselves distinctly to separate and the Earth as rejected to precipitate downwards by reason of its Gravity and solid Ponderosity so that these two Elements were only made visible but the Fire and the Air they fled our sight which by reason of Purity became also invisible whose Sublime Bodies by the Creators Will elevated themselves to influence the Earth whereby to impregnate it with Prolifick Vertue This was and is that beautiful Order wherein the Divinest so divinely placed things when the Earth as an Embrio lay hid and concealed in the Exuberant Womb of the unweildy Waters And this is that great and stupendious work of Separation which Act or Operation was fit only for God who separated the Light from the mists of Darkness which glorious Operation the Prophet Moses points at as a thing principally to be minded and considered if provided any one would imitate the Creator when in the beginning he created the Universe but the end of the Creation stands still in the Ternary of which more at large in its proper place Christ therefore is our Soveraign and our Saving Light that comprehends the Darkness yet the Darkness knows him not whose beauteous brightness illuminates the World and is that Glory and Majesty of Light that was from God that never had beginning which Incomprehensible Light shined before the beginning to illuminate the Throne of the Majesty of God and is the true Essential Word of God and the Word is God the Wisdom of the Father as is manifested to us by Moses and the Prophets But the created Luminaries as Sun Moon and Stars these are but Elementary subject therefore to corruption when God shall please to extinguish their Light by withdrawing the Beauteous Ray of himself and as the Light of the Sun is the Beauty of the Creation how much more beautiful is the Son of God the All-glorious Beauty of the Majesty of God The Created World therefore was made to discover visible Objects and things Corporeal but the Increated and most Sovereign Being to make obvious to us things Invisible the Natural to inspect both Elements and Principles but the Supernatural to
unlock the Meanders of Nature Diana in this Vision seem'd almost unvailed and every thing naked in its native simplicity This represents somewhat an Admical state but unsatisfied in mind as to these discoveries I was led to contemplate the Mysteries of the Incarnation how the Divinity when cloathed with Humanity took not only our Nature but our Infirmities upon him and was a bright and shining Light illuminating the World and every thing therein and is that Light which saveth the World that shines in darkness yet the darkness knows it not a Light of that Beauty that illustrates Eternity and regenerates us Plants in the Paradice of God to legitimize us Heirs of the New Ierusalem which if duely considered here 's a prospect of Life when at a distance stands hovering the issues of Death So that Good and Evil seem to stand in a Poiz ' till Earth be found lite by the counterpoiz of Heaven and here it was also I see my self naked waiting for a change for God is all This leads me on to a farther consisideration if when to contemplate what 's more visible than Earth and Earth and Water to compleat but one Globe whilst the Air is drest up with the blessings of Vegetation whereby to inrich and impregnate the Earth As may be seen in the very front and surface of the Soil since dekt and adorn'd with such beautiful Greens as Ornaments of Superiours illustrating inferiours So that the Earth was spread with prolifick Vertue and production from thence immediately ensued by discovering the prodigious plenty of Grass a word large enough to express it universal had not some laboured tho' to little purpose because when to shroud it under the denomination of Herbage Grass therefore admits of a large extension when because to comprehend both Animals and Vegetables and is peradventure the Original word notwithstanding the various interpretation of Expositors because directing it self to the level Paul speaks of as two intersecting Angles direct to the Centre of one and the same single gnomen So that we need not to cavil about the word Grass where the property of the thing is so well understood Herbage therefore is Grass and Paul tells us Flesh is Grass and Grass by interpretation is the most universal Vegetable Trees and Plants also are of the same Linage save only from a larger size of more maturated Grass Stones and concressions also what must we call them if not coagulated and petrefied Grass So that Grass in one respect is every thing that Earth vegetates tho modified after various Formations and Figures differently drest up by the hand of Nature And because haveing respect to time and place by supplement of Air and moist soveraign Vapours causeth it to grow and spreading It self on the Superficies of Earth spires out into Grass Which when otherwise concealed in subterranean Cavities grows up into Metals and the race of Minerals As for Example have not all Trees their Roots in the Earth when their loaden Boughs hang burdned with Fruit. And are not all Metalline Roots radicated in the Air when the Centre of the Earth is burdened with their Fruits what 's more intelligible Now there is but one universal Spirit in Nature from whence things Originally have all their supplies and the three Clauses also of Animals Vegetables and Minerals are they not so many Marks Sigels and Characters which the Creator has imprinted and stampt upon them whereby the Creature might read and know them But Man above all because Lord of the Creation is made most intelligible whereby to understand them wherefore he calls them by Names for distinction when as the rest of the Creatures know them only by instinct And this vegetating Spirit has its Seed in its self and the Air is plentifully replenished with it which Seeds scatter'd and spread about the Vniverse furnisheth the Creatures in all parts of the Creation The Americans can tell you that Trees grew naturally where the Native Indians never had a being and were it not for Europes agriculture and industry her florid Fields and flourishing Pastures would soon feel the fatal stroke of disorder so become Forrests and barren Desarts fit only for beastial and salvage inhabitants For God never made nor sent any thing into the World that was either indigent defective or imperfect every Creature nay the Plants themselves were furnished with prolifick and seminal qualifications sterility was a thing utterly unknown till disobedience disinherited our royal Protoplast which had for ever so remained to the periods of time had not the Cross obliterated the Curse Our Ancestours oft laboured to strike out the Eyesore which the succeeding Generations have thought no impediment because to study new Modes of Sinning whereby to improve impiety by consent which has rarely ceased to follow every Generation as naturally in my opinion as Rust attends Copper fretting and corroding the natural Body till time and other comodes blot out its Character so permits the compound to slide into Atomes and yield it self Captive to the Prisons of Death waiting from the Artist a Resurrection But such Bodies as these we call imperfect because of a Leprosie impendent on them when as indeed there are other dignified Bodies that fear not to die because uncapable of Death whose peluced anima like Stars in the Firmament make glad the Adepti and solicitous in Art. In the next place I purpose to speak something of Light and since Light by the Text is the Oracle of God it was by his Wisdome apparently made manifest when undressing the Hoil of this beauteous Creation which Light also leapt out of the bosome of Eternity into the Vision and perspective of Time and because expatiating it self in the Chaos was the Cause of this admirable Separation of the Waters when by Divine Ordination they divided themselves and then it was that dry Land appeared Nor could it be otherwise because then the purer parts immediately began to feel the force of Separation so let the recrements subside to the bottome because of their feculent and impure Centre and thus by the Fiat were all impurities Separated from that which of it self was altogether pure and this Act of Separation we attribute to God who substituted Nature daily to operate For should there happen but the least Cessation the whole Compound would annihilate so become invisible But every Separation of separable Things creates the Unity and perpetuates the Harmony since the Life of one Element is dependent on another nor lives the one without the breathings of the other The Waters perpepetually moistening the Earth whiles the Earth inspires and ferments the Water but the soft sweetnings and breathings of Air impregnates both as do the Stars in their station and Celestial Rotation actually influence and penetrate the whole From whence we morrally and rationally conclude that Earth made dissoluble converts into Water and Water by heat is raâ—ified into Air. Air consequently by circulation is convertible into Fire and this
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
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