3 8 The Advancement of Learning 



violating at all the truth of the story or letter,) an image of 

 the two estates, the contemplative state and the active 

 state, figured in the two persons of Abel and Cain, and in 

 the two simplest and most primitive trades of hf e ; that of 

 the shepherd, (who, by reason of his leisure, rest in a place, 

 and living in view of heaven, is a lively image of a contem- 

 plative life,) and that of the husbandman : ^ where we see 

 again the favour and election of God went to the shepherd, 

 and not to the tiller of the ground. 



8. So in the age before the flood, the holy records within 

 those few memorials which are there entered and registered 

 have vouchsafed to mention and honour the name of the 

 inventors and authors of music and works 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 

 was chiefly imbarred. 



9. To descend to Moses the lawgiver, and God's first pen: 

 he is adorned by the Scriptures with this addition and 

 commendation, That he was seen in all the learning of the 

 Egyptians ; * which nation, we know, was one of the most 

 ancient schools of the world: for so Plato brings in the 

 Egyptian priest saying unto Solon: You Grecians are ever 

 children ; 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 impres- 

 sion 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 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, tliat putrefaction is more con- 

 tagious 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 



^ Gen. iv. 2. * iv. 21, 22. 



» xi. * Act. Ap. vii. 22. 



• Plat. Tim, iii. 23. • Levit. xiii. 12-14. 



