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46 OF THE ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING. [VI.6. — 4 
the fall, it was, as was touched before, not the natural 
knowledge of creatures, but the moral knowledge of good 
and evil; wherein the supposition was, that God’s com- 
mandments or prohibitions were not the originals of good 
and evil, but that they had other beginnings, which man 
aspired to know; to the end to make a total defection 
from God and to depend wholly upon himself. 
4. To pass on: in the first event or occurrence after 
the fall of man, we. see (as the scriptures have infinite 
mysteries, not violating at all the truth of the story or 
letter) an image of the two estates, the contemplative/— 
state and the active state, figured in the two persons 
\* of Abel and Cain, and in the twossimplest and most 
primitive trades of life; that of the shepherd (who, by 
__/ reason of his leisure, rest in a place, and living in view of 
heayen, is a lively image. of a contemplative life), and that 
.of the husbandman: Where we see again the favour and 
election of God went to the shepherd, and not to the tiller 
of the ground. 
8. So in the age before the flood, the holy records . 
within those few memorials which are there entered and 
registered, have vouchsafed to mention and honour the 
* name of the inventors and authors of. music and works in 
metal. In the age after the flood, the first great judge- 
} > ment of God upon tHe ambition of man was the confu- 
sion of tongues ; whereby the open trade and intercourse 
of learning and knowledge was chiefly imbarred. 
9. To descend to Moyses the lawgiver, and God’s first 
pen: he is adorned by the scriptures with this addition 
v4 ‘and commendation, That he was seen in all the learning of 
the Egyptians ; which nation we know Was one of the 
most ancient schools of the world: for so Plato brings in 
the Egyptian priest saying unto Solon, You Grecians are 
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