14 THE WISDOM OF THE ANCIENTS. 



VIRG. ECLOG. 6. 



&quot; Namque canebat uti magnum per inane coacta. 

 &quot; Semina, terrarumque, animoeque marisque fuissent. 

 &quot; Et liquid! simul ignis: Et his exordia primis 

 &quot; Omnia et ipse tener mundi concreverit orbis.&quot; 



For rich-vein d Orpheus sweetly did rehearse 

 How that the seeds of fire, air, water, earth, 

 Were all pact in the vast void universe : 

 And how from these, as firstlings, all had birth, 

 And how the body of this orbick frame, 

 From tender infancy so big became. 



But as touching the third conceit of Pan s ori 

 ginal, it seems that the Grecians, either by intercourse 

 with the Egyptians, or one way or other, had heard 

 something of the Hebrew mysteries; for it points to 

 the state of the world, not considered in immediate 

 creation, but after the fall of Adam, exposed and 

 made subject to death and corruption ; for in that 

 state it was, and remains to this day, the offspring 

 of God and sin ; and therefore all these three narra 

 tions concerning the manner of Pan s birth may seem 

 to be true, if it be rightly distinguished between 

 things and times. For this Pan, or Nature, which we 

 inspect, contemplate, and reverence more than is fit, 

 took beginning from the word of God by the means 

 of confused matter, and the entrance of prevarication 

 and corruption. The destinies may well be thought 

 the sisters of Pan, or Nature, because the beginnings 

 and continuances, and corruptions, and depressions, 

 and dissolutions, and eminences, and labours, and 

 felicities of things, and all the chances which can 



