es THE FIRST BOOK. 47 
ever children; you have no ‘knowledge of antiquity, nor 
antiquity of knowledge. ‘Take a view of the ceremonial 
law of Moyses; you shall find, besides the prefiguration 
of Christ, the badge or difference of the people, of God, 
the exercise and impression of *débedience, and other 
divine uses and fruits thereof, that some of the most 
learned Rabbins have travailed profitably and profoundly 
to observe, some of them a natural, some of them a moral, 
sense or reduction of many of the ceremonies and or- 
dinances. As in the law of the leprosy, where it is said, 
Lf the whiteness have overspread the flesh, the patient may 
pass abroad for clean ; but of there be any whole flesh 
remaining, he ts to be shut up for unclean; one of them 
noteth a principle of nature, that putrefaction is more 
contagious before maturity than after: and another noteth 
a position of moral philosophy;that men abandoned to 
vice do not so much corrupt manners, as those that are 
half good and half evil. So in this and very many other 
places in that law, there is to be found, besides the theo- 
logical sense, much aspersion of philosophy. 
10. So likewise in that excellent book of Job, if it be 
revolved with diligence, it will be found pregnant and 
swelling with natural philosophy ; as for example, cos- 
mography, and the Tomudaeke of the world, Qui extendit 
aquilonem super vacuum, et appendit terram super nihilum ; 
wherein the pensileness of the earth, the pole of the north, 
and the finiteness or convexity of heaven are manifestly 
touched. So again, matter of astronomy; Spirifus ejus 
’ ornavit ca@los, et obstetricante manu ejus eductus est Coluber 
 tortuosus. And in another place, Munguid conjungere © 
valebis micantes stellas Pletadas, aut gyrum Arcturt poterts 
dissipare ? Where the fixing of the stars, ever standing 
at equal distance, is with great elegancy noted. And in 
7 
AT 
