ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING 25 



ministry ; so that the angels of knowledge and illumination are 

 placed before the angels of office and domination./ 1 



To descend from spiritual and intellectual, to sensible and 

 material forms ; we read the first created form was light,? which, 

 in nature and corporeal things, hath a relation and correspond- 

 ence to knowledge in spirits, and things incorporeal ; so, in 

 the distribution of days, we find the day wherein God rested and 

 completed his works, was blessed above all the days wherein 

 he wrought them.r 



After the creation was finished, it is said that man was placed 

 in the garden to work therein, which work could only be work 

 of contemplation ; that is, the end of his work was but for ex- 

 ercise and delight, and not for necessity : for there being then 

 no reluctance of the creature, nor sweat of the brow, man's em- 

 ployment was consequently matter of pleasure, not labor. 

 Again, the first acts which man performed in Paradise consisted 

 of the two summary parts of knowledge, a view of the creature, 

 and imposition of names.* 



In the first event after the fall, we find an image of the two 

 states, the contemplative and the active, figured out in the per- 

 sons of Abel and Cain, by the two simplest and most primitive 

 trades, that of the shepherd and that of the husbandman ;f where 

 again, the favor of God went to the shepherd, and not to the 

 tiller of the ground. 



So in the age before the flood, the sacred records mention the 

 name of the inventors of music and workers in metal." In the 

 age after the flood, the first great judgment of God upon the 

 ambition of man was the confusion of tongues,*> whereby the 

 open trade and intercourse of learning and knowledge were 

 chiefly obstructed. 



It is said of Moses, " That he was learned in all the wisdom of 

 the Egyptians,"^ which nation was one of the most ancient 

 schools of the world ; for Plato brings in the Egyptian priest 

 saying to Solon, " You Grecians are ever children, having 

 no knowledge of antiquity nor antiquity of knowledge."* In 

 the ceremonial laws of Moses we find, that besides the pre- 

 figuration of Christ, the mark of the people of God to 

 distinguish them from the Gentiles, the exercise of obe- 

 dience, and other divine institutions, the most learned of the 

 rabbis have observed a natural and some of them a moral sense 

 in many of the rites and ceremonies. Thus in the law of the 



