THE FIRST BOOK 205 



upon the ambition of man was the confusion of tongues ; 

 whereby the open trade and intercourse of learning and 

 knowledge was chiefly imbarred. 



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 impression of obedience, and other divine 

 uses and fruits thereof, that some of the most learned 

 Rabbins have travelled profitably and profoundly to 

 observe, some of them a natural, some of them a moral, 

 sense or reduction of many of the ceremonies and ordi- 

 nances. As in the law of the leprosy, where it is said, ' If 

 the whiteness hath overspread the flesh, the patient may pass 

 abroad for clean ; but if there be any whole flesh remain- 

 ing, 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 

 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 exiendit 

 aquilonem super vacuum^ et appendit terram super nihilum ; 

 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 coelos, et obstetricante manu ejus eductu? est Coluber 

 torluosus. And in another place; Nunquid conjungere 



