BOOK l] scriptures SUPPORT DIGNITY OP KNOWLEDGE. 55 



ledge and illumination are placed before the angels of office 

 and domination.^ 



To descend from spiritual and intellectual, to sensible and 

 material forms ; we read the first created form was liglit," 

 which, in nature and corporeal things, hath a relation and cor- 

 respondence to knowledge in spirits, and things incorporeal ; 

 so, in the distribution of days, we find the day wherein God 

 i-ested and completed his works, was blessed above all the 

 days wherein he wrought them.^ 



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 exercise and delight, and not for necessity : for 

 there being then no reluctance of the creature, nor sweat 

 of the brow, man's employment was consequently matter 

 of pleasure, not labour. 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, s 



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

 two states, the contemplative and the active, figured out in 

 the persons of Abel and Cain, by the two simplest and most 

 primitive trades, that of the shepherd and that of the 

 husbandman ;^» where again, the favour 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 was chiefly obstructed. 



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

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

 ancient schools of the world; for Plato brings in the Egyp- 

 tian priest saying to Solon, "You Grecians are ever children, 

 having no knowledge of antiquity, nor antiquity of know- 

 bdge.""* In the ceremonial laws of Moses we find, that 



d See Dionys. Hierarch. 7, 8, 9. • Gen. i. 3. 



' Gen. ii. 3. « Gen. H. 19. »« Gen. iv. 2. » Gen, iv. 21, 22. 



k Gen. xi. » Acts vii. 22. » Plat. Tim. iii. 22. 



