VI. 9-] 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 obedience, 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, 

 If the whiteness have overspread the flesh, the patient may 

 pass abroad for clean ; but if there be any whole flesh 

 remaining, he is 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, .rnuch aspersion of philosophy. 



10. So likewise in thaPexcenent book of Jnb 3 if it be 

 revolved with diligence, it will be found pregnant and 

 swelling with. nalmaL-pliilosojihy ; as for example, ^cos- 

 mographjvrid_ th_e _iou4fts&-uf 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; Spiritus ejus 

 ornavit calos, et obstetricante manu ejus eductus est Coluber 

 tortuosus. And in another place, Nunquid conjungere 

 valebis micantes Stellas Pleiadas, aut gyrum Arcturi poteris 

 dissipare ? Where the fixing of the stars, ever standing 

 at equal distance, is with great elegancy noted. And in 



