The First Book 37 



Spirits;* we find, as far as credit is to be given to the 

 celestial hierarchy of that supposed Dionysius the senator 

 of Athens, the first place or degree is given to the angels of 

 Love, which are termed Seraphim ; the second to the angels 

 of Light, which are termed Cherubim; and the third, and 

 so following places, to Thrones, Principalities, and the rest, 

 which are all angels of power and ministry ; so as the angels 

 of Knowledge and Illumination are placed before the angels 

 of Office and Domination. ^ 



4. To descend from Spirits and Intellectual Forms to Sensible 

 and Material Forms; we read the first Form that was 

 created was Light,' which hath a relation and correspond- 

 ence in nature and corporal things to Knowledge in Spirits 

 and incorporal things. 



5- So in the distribution of days we see the day wherein God 

 did rest and contemplate His own works, was blessed above 

 all the days wherein He did effect, and accomplish them.* 



6. After the creation was finished, it is set down unto us 

 that man was placed in the garden to work therein ; which 

 work, so appointed to him, could be no other than work of 

 Contemplation; that is, when the end of work is but for 

 exercise and experiment, not for necessity ; for there being 

 then no reluctation of the creature, nor sweat of the brow, 

 man's employment must of consequence have been matter 

 of dehght in the experiment, and not matter of labour for 

 the use. Again, the first acts which man performed in 

 Paradise consisted of the two summary parts of knowledge ; 

 the view of creatures, and the imposition of names.* As 

 for the knowledge which induced the fall, it was, as was 

 touched before, not the natural knowledge of creatures, but 

 the moral knowledge of good and evil ; wherein the supposi- 

 tion was, that God's commandments or prohibitions were 

 not the originals of good and evil, but that they had other 

 beginnings, which man aspired to know ; to the end to make, 

 a total defection from God and to depend wholly upon 

 himself. 



7. To pass on : in the first event or occurrence after the fall 

 of man, we see, (as the Scriptures have infinite mysteries, not 



^ Cf. Hooker, Ecclesiastical Polity, I, iv. i, 2. 



' Dionys. De Ccelesti Hierarch. cap. 7, 8, 9. This work is, as 

 Bacon hints, spurious, though no other author is assigned. 

 * Gen. i. 3. * ii. 3. ^ ii. 19. 



