THE FIRST BOOK. 43 



childn : you have no knowledge of antiquity, nor antiquity of 

 knowledge. Take a view of the ceremonial law of Moses ; 

 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 ordinances. As in the law of the leprosy, where it is 

 said, If the whiteness have overspread the flesh, the patient may 10 

 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 theological sense, much 

 aspersion of philosophy. 



So likewise in that excellent book of Job, if it be 20 

 revolved with diligence, it will be found pregnant and 

 swelling with natural philosophy ; as for example, cosmo 

 graphy, and the roundness of the world, Qui extendit 

 aquilonem super vacuum, et appendit terram super nihilum; 

 [He stretcheth out the North over the empty place, and hangeth 

 the earth upon nothing /] 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 ccelos, et obstetricante manu 

 ejus cductus est coluber tortuosus: [By his spirit he hath 30 

 garnished the heavens : his hand hath formed the crooked serpent.'] 

 And in another place ; Nunquid conjungere valebis micantes 

 Stellas Pleiadas, aut gyrum Aroturi poteris dissiparef [Canst 

 thou bring together the glittering stars of the Pleiades, or 

 scatter the array of Arcturus .?] Where the fixing of the stars, 

 ever standing at equal distance, is with great elegancy noted. 



