time: the refreshing river 



but everyone who has any experience and is able to speak of 

 any art or language, or of the nature of the heavens above or 

 of the earth below, shall have free liberty to speak when they 

 offer themselves and in a civil manner desire an audience; yet 

 he who is the reader for the year may have his liberty to speak 

 too, but not to assume all power to himself, as the proud and 

 ignorant clergy have done, who have bewitched all the world 

 by their subtle covetousness and pride. And every one who 

 speaks of any herb, plant, art, or nature of mankind, is required 

 to speak nothing by imagination, but what he has found out 

 by his own industry and observation in trials [experiments]. 

 And thus to speak, or thus to read, the law of Nature (or God) 

 as He hath written His name in every body, is to speak the truth 

 as Jesus Christ spake it, giving to everything its own weight 

 and measure. 'Aye, but' saith the zealous but ignorant professor 

 [of religion], 'this is a low and carnal ministry indeed. This leads 

 men to know nothing but the knowledge of the earth, and the 

 secrets of Nature; but we are to look after spiritual and heavenly 

 things.' I answer, to know the secrets of Nature is to know the 

 works of God, and to know the works of God within the^ 

 creation is to know God himself, for God dwells in every visible 

 work or body. And indeed, if you would know spiritual things, 

 it is to know how the Spirit or Power of Wisdom and Life, 

 causing motion or growth, dwells within and governs both the 

 several bodies of the stars and planets of the heavens above, 

 and the several bodies of the earth below; as grass^ plants, fishes, 

 beasts, birds, and mankind; for to know God beyond the creation, 

 or to know what he will do to a man after the man is dead, if 

 any otherwise than to scatter him into his essences of fire, water, 

 earth, and air, of which he is compounded; is a knowledge 

 beyond the line or capacity of man to attain to while he yet 

 lives in his compounded body."^ 



This wonderful passage demonstrates that even among a true repre- 

 sentative of the people (for Winstanley was not of middle-class origin, 

 like most of the early scientists) a clear understanding of the social 

 importance of science could be found. Both Winstanley and the early 

 Fellows of the Royal Society, good puritans, gave as their conscious 

 motive the study of the works of God. 



' Works, Sabine edn. (Cornell, 1941), p. 564. 



102 



