this was a token of Love to the Creation when God daily renewed his blessings upon the Creature For the blessing upon Adam was by divine appointment transferred to succession upon Adam's Generation which afterwards in time perverted through corruption by a passive neglect in Adams Posterity Now as every good thing is the Gift of God and since whatever God gives is certainly good the Fruit of Paradice could be no otherwise than good because the Gift of God that gave it and the Fish in the Sea and the Fowl in the Air which God gave unto Adam were supreamly good So that every thing in the Creation and created being had the tincture and sweetness proceeding from God who through Wisdome ordain'd it and by Providence maintains it the consequence therefore must needs be good Yet above all the blessings that ever God gave us was in giving unto us himself in his Son the glorious Mystery and Revelation of God which Gift of God was greater than the World and was the Gift of him that gave himself for the World. To all the Creatures in the Creation God bid them be fruitful and in multiplying multiply and replenish the Earth But in Adam peculiarly as in a Divine Garden-Plot God sowed there the Seed of Everlasting Life from whence by cultivation and the Goodness of God he might expect to reap an ever-living Crop for the Seed was the Seed of Eternal Life and not the effects of Sin and Dead Works No Brambles grew up in this heavenly Vintage whereof God himself was the Vine-roon This is the new and the holy Ierusalem wherein Paul may Plant and Apollo Water yet if the Sons of Adam be barren Sciens how can they produce this soveraign Fruit without the heavenly Dews of the Son of God. Adam may multiply and replenish the Earth yet if wanting the blessing of God his Benefactor what profits it To be good therefore is to be like unto God and likeness in every thing creats love since every thing naturally loves its like and this love in Man is the abstract of God in as much as God is Love original Whatever goodness therefore shines in Man is really a derivative from God himself So that should we trace the dimensions of Adam with the extent of his Monarchy how large his Commission runs over the Earth and the Ocean it would be endless for his limitation was boundless the Fowl of Heaven knew no Lord but Adam and the Fish in the Sea no Soveraign but himself and every created thing that had breath and moved and every moving thing that breathed and was created had no Supream nor Superintendent but Adam For Adam as a Star shin'd then upon Earth and made great by him that 's all goodness and greatness was blest in his Posterity and glorious Nativity or heavenly Birth since two Divine Natures shin'd splendidly in him For God had implanted both himself and his Son to make Adam beautiful as himself is glorious the nature of the one was to live and never die but the nature of the other was to die to live This seems a Paradox I 'll therefore explain it That Power that lives and never dies is the Divinity of the Majesty of God when the Almighty before the Creation divinely calculated the Nativity of Life for God said in himself let us now make man like unto our self in our similitude let us make him which likeness or similitude was uncapable of death consequently of diminution or division of parts because the similitude of God himself for God breathed into Adam the breath of Life and he became a living soul who therefore so vain precipitant and idle as to imagine the Breath of God can extinguish Time shall wear out and Gerations walk off and Death it self become an Exile and all things terminate and drop into decay but the Breath of God which is that illuminating light that enlightens the World and the Soul of Man when that glorious light shall co-unite with darkness which is altogether improbable and utterly impossible then shall that hidden life God breathed into Adam be capable of death and not before So that two Lives liv'd at once in our Ancestor a created Life and a Life regenerate a created Life as from a heavenly Birth which sprung Originally from the Womb of Eternity and because made like to the likeness of his Maker it gave him Victory to triumph over Sin putting into his custody the secrets of Life and placing in his hands the Keys of Death So that he knew nothing but absolute freedome and unprohibited the use of the whole Creation one Tree only by the Divinest excepted in which God had placed a peculiar property fit only for himself in wisdome to know God therefore imposed his commands upon Adam not to taste thereof lest peradventure he die The other Life was that of Regeneration which is Christ incarnate God in the Creature this Life liv'd invisibly before the Creation and is that hidden Life in Christ manifest by the Apostle Christ in you the hope of Glory Which remains a mystery to this very day as in former Ages a secret to our Ancestors which Life is the Power of God to Salvation and was in the beginning with God himself and it was God and was made Flesh and by the Will of God dwelt among men This is that Word that spake in the beginning and moved in the Patriarchs our Ancestors to speak that liv'd immaculately in the blessed Virgin that was made Flesh and dwelt among men that bore our infirmities and was Crucified at Ierusalem that in spight of Death took captivity captive and in despite of Hell captivated Death and which also is that Eternal Word that now is ever was and for ever shall be to convince the World of Sin Impenitency Incredulity and Ingratitude which Monster of a Sin is worse than Witchcraft and tho' a Witch be superscrib'd a Rebel in Physicks yet reversing the Point a Rebel is a Witch in Politicks The one because acting against the Law of Nature but the other because striving against Order and Government But God gave unto Adam a Charter Royal that was sign'd and seal'd with those glorious Characters of Sun Moon and Stars and all the Host of Heaven to witness to it This was that great and superlative Grant that God gave unto Adam when he placed him in Paradice and wherewith to refresh him he gave him every Herb and of every Tree that was burd'ned with Fruit whereof he might eat and live before him These Royal Priviledges God gave unto Adam and Heavens Benefactor confirm'd them unto him Now Adam may freely eat and live or he may eat and assuredly die for Life and Death stand as it were in a poiz and because to our Protoplast seemingly mingled they seemingly presented one single Existence as if Property and Quality were intirely one 't is true one Mantle overshadowed both till God out of compassion made more visible discoveries
Royalty at the Eye as having some blind Iurisdiction in the Pores For this were to measure Magical Positions by the Superficial Strictures of common Philosophy Whose Assertors too confident of the Principles of Tradition labour not to understand what others speak but to make others speak what they themselves understand For it is in Nature as appears in Religion some are still hammering and fashioning of old Elements but seek not the Eutopia that lies beyond them This Body therefore let 's consider it the Temple and the Soul that 's within it the Sanctum Sanctorum for the Majesty to dwell in Which if so this Earth must be rarified to make a pure Heaven and Heaven must be purified before the Divinest will inhabit within it Great and Iust therefore is the Original Good whose Incomprehensible Beauty and Divine Majesty neither the Heavens nor the Earth nor the Orbs nor the Ocean nor the expatiated Abyss can any ways contain him Which certainly to know is Speculum Sapientiae scraw'd out in the fair Frontespiece of the beautiful Creation as also in that Divine Manuscript of Holy Writ where the Patriarchs and the Prophets are Marginal Notes and the Holy Men of God with our pious Ancestors the lively Records and divine Remembrancers of the Sacred Oracles of the Majesty of Truth Thus far the Ark of the Covenant travelled and thus far the Talmudists transported themselves but some of the Cabalists went some degrees farther when they met with Christ and his Twelve Apostles yet could they not see the great Messiah But Gabriel the Angel salutes the Blessed Virgin with Hail Mary full of Grace blessed art thou among the Daughters of Women For the Holy of Holies shall overshadow thee with Beauty and thou shalt conceive and bear a Child and he shall be called the Son of God. John Baptist also he confirms the Miracle who when Jesus with him coming forth of the Water the Heavens themselves most gloriously opened and the Holy Ghost divinely descending like a Dove rested the Glory of the Majesty upon him and then was there a Voice heard from the Divinest This is my Son my beloved Son let the Nations hear him Now to the Jews this became a stumbling-block as to some of the Rabbies a Rock of offence but to the Gentiles that sat in the Suburbs of Darkness and the Scriptures tell us in the Shadow of Death the most glorious Mystery of the Revelation of God and the everlasting Gospel was preached unto them So that from these two eminent and most sacred Primordials the one of the Law and the other of the Gospel Religion or something like it took its native Original yet so strangely masqueraded disfigured and disguised that were not a Man well assured what it was it would be found difficult to resolve what to call it And thus the Sun Heavens major Luminary when because at once falling upon several Angles represents the Light in various forms So Christianity though a familiar Appellation yet admits it of such Variety in its progress and peregrination because when to mingle it self with all sorts of Professions that Professors themselves have been puzled how to rate it whiles the noble Berean searches the Scriptures and as the Scriptures manifestly testifie of Christ so Christ himself saith they testifie of him The great Oracle therefore and the Miracle of Faith is Christ himself and Christ is God From whence the Mystery of our Eternal Salvation the blessed Regeneration and the spiritual Birth that internally breaths in every pious Believer is Christ in us the hope of Glory the Sovereign Revealer of the Wisdom of God whose Light is the Beauty of the Majesty of Light that enlightneth every one coming into the World and is our saving and our sanctifying Light before Time had a Being God blessed for ever Thus in brief I present you with a Sacred Summary of my pious Conceptions of the Scriptures of Truth divulg'd to the World as a Treasure of Mysteries calculated for the Assiduous and only such whose Integrity and Fidelity internally shine forth as their Faces externally in a Glass respond and answer a due and exact Proportion From whence I conclude this Philosophical Axiom As are the Writings of Moses the Standard of Truth that God the Creator has by a Royal Law imposed upon Nature eternally to operate the Vniversal Spirit therefore is but One in all her Operations viz. in the Fire to influence in the Air to impregnate in the Water to germinate and in the Earth to vegetate Where note The Elements consequently the Principles were divinely preordained by the Sovereign Power of him that 's Supream who constituted Nature to conserve the Creation or solemnly I declare I understand it not Nor would I be thought either rash or unreasonable to reassume a Priviledge in what I distribute but as Words are my own whiles yet in my Mouth and every bodies else when unconfined so let them be and have a charitable Reception when to run their Risque in the Worlds great Lottery because when to fall under various Conceptions yet if so happy to meet with the Ingenious in Science meaning such as dread and honour their Creator and imitate Nature in her solitary Operations which every expert Artist and experienced will do provided his Inquisitions be after the Truth to such and such only I dedicate my Labors together with my Endeavours to Wisdoms elaborate Shrine that with vertuous Inclinations they may seek after Discoveries and the abstruse Tracts of their Friend Philanthropus RABBI MOSES IN the beginning God created the Heaven and the Earth Which directs me to contemplate this World is a great Machine or an Engine-royal adapted for Motion by the Power of Him that created the Creation that not so much as an Atom can move or stir save only by a derivative Vertue from him that thro Wisdom and Providence gave a Being to the Whole who knows all the Parts and Particles of his Work. How can he then be thought ignorant of its Motion or in any thing be deficient when he that made the World knows how to influence the hidden Springs and Parts thereof he knows for what End and Duration he design'd its Motion and the time when all things shall pass away So that when the Divinest withdraws the Springs of Life viz. his supporting Providence from any Creature in the Creation or from the Elements or the whole World it self it must sink into a state of Inactivity consequently become a meer Annihilation Now That Heaven and Earth are Corelates who doubts it That they sprung spontaneously from one Principium who disputes it And that they had in themselves by Divine Ordination Ends and Beginnings most properly adapted and insinuated into them who so Impious and Atheistical to suspect it That the World had a Beginning is manifest That Eternity preceded Time is most manifest And that every End terminates in its own proper Beginnings nothing more manifest Every End therefore
unlock the Meanders of Nature Diana in this Vision seem'd almost unvailed and every thing naked in its native simplicity This represents somewhat an Admical state but unsatisfied in mind as to these discoveries I was led to contemplate the Mysteries of the Incarnation how the Divinity when cloathed with Humanity took not only our Nature but our Infirmities upon him and was a bright and shining Light illuminating the World and every thing therein and is that Light which saveth the World that shines in darkness yet the darkness knows it not a Light of that Beauty that illustrates Eternity and regenerates us Plants in the Paradice of God to legitimize us Heirs of the New Ierusalem which if duely considered here 's a prospect of Life when at a distance stands hovering the issues of Death So that Good and Evil seem to stand in a Poiz ' till Earth be found lite by the counterpoiz of Heaven and here it was also I see my self naked waiting for a change for God is all This leads me on to a farther consisideration if when to contemplate what 's more visible than Earth and Earth and Water to compleat but one Globe whilst the Air is drest up with the blessings of Vegetation whereby to inrich and impregnate the Earth As may be seen in the very front and surface of the Soil since dekt and adorn'd with such beautiful Greens as Ornaments of Superiours illustrating inferiours So that the Earth was spread with prolifick Vertue and production from thence immediately ensued by discovering the prodigious plenty of Grass a word large enough to express it universal had not some laboured tho' to little purpose because when to shroud it under the denomination of Herbage Grass therefore admits of a large extension when because to comprehend both Animals and Vegetables and is peradventure the Original word notwithstanding the various interpretation of Expositors because directing it self to the level Paul speaks of as two intersecting Angles direct to the Centre of one and the same single gnomen So that we need not to cavil about the word Grass where the property of the thing is so well understood Herbage therefore is Grass and Paul tells us Flesh is Grass and Grass by interpretation is the most universal Vegetable Trees and Plants also are of the same Linage save only from a larger size of more maturated Grass Stones and concressions also what must we call them if not coagulated and petrefied Grass So that Grass in one respect is every thing that Earth vegetates tho modified after various Formations and Figures differently drest up by the hand of Nature And because haveing respect to time and place by supplement of Air and moist soveraign Vapours causeth it to grow and spreading It self on the Superficies of Earth spires out into Grass Which when otherwise concealed in subterranean Cavities grows up into Metals and the race of Minerals As for Example have not all Trees their Roots in the Earth when their loaden Boughs hang burdned with Fruit. And are not all Metalline Roots radicated in the Air when the Centre of the Earth is burdened with their Fruits what 's more intelligible Now there is but one universal Spirit in Nature from whence things Originally have all their supplies and the three Clauses also of Animals Vegetables and Minerals are they not so many Marks Sigels and Characters which the Creator has imprinted and stampt upon them whereby the Creature might read and know them But Man above all because Lord of the Creation is made most intelligible whereby to understand them wherefore he calls them by Names for distinction when as the rest of the Creatures know them only by instinct And this vegetating Spirit has its Seed in its self and the Air is plentifully replenished with it which Seeds scatter'd and spread about the Vniverse furnisheth the Creatures in all parts of the Creation The Americans can tell you that Trees grew naturally where the Native Indians never had a being and were it not for Europes agriculture and industry her florid Fields and flourishing Pastures would soon feel the fatal stroke of disorder so become Forrests and barren Desarts fit only for beastial and salvage inhabitants For God never made nor sent any thing into the World that was either indigent defective or imperfect every Creature nay the Plants themselves were furnished with prolifick and seminal qualifications sterility was a thing utterly unknown till disobedience disinherited our royal Protoplast which had for ever so remained to the periods of time had not the Cross obliterated the Curse Our Ancestours oft laboured to strike out the Eyesore which the succeeding Generations have thought no impediment because to study new Modes of Sinning whereby to improve impiety by consent which has rarely ceased to follow every Generation as naturally in my opinion as Rust attends Copper fretting and corroding the natural Body till time and other comodes blot out its Character so permits the compound to slide into Atomes and yield it self Captive to the Prisons of Death waiting from the Artist a Resurrection But such Bodies as these we call imperfect because of a Leprosie impendent on them when as indeed there are other dignified Bodies that fear not to die because uncapable of Death whose peluced anima like Stars in the Firmament make glad the Adepti and solicitous in Art. In the next place I purpose to speak something of Light and since Light by the Text is the Oracle of God it was by his Wisdome apparently made manifest when undressing the Hoil of this beauteous Creation which Light also leapt out of the bosome of Eternity into the Vision and perspective of Time and because expatiating it self in the Chaos was the Cause of this admirable Separation of the Waters when by Divine Ordination they divided themselves and then it was that dry Land appeared Nor could it be otherwise because then the purer parts immediately began to feel the force of Separation so let the recrements subside to the bottome because of their feculent and impure Centre and thus by the Fiat were all impurities Separated from that which of it self was altogether pure and this Act of Separation we attribute to God who substituted Nature daily to operate For should there happen but the least Cessation the whole Compound would annihilate so become invisible But every Separation of separable Things creates the Unity and perpetuates the Harmony since the Life of one Element is dependent on another nor lives the one without the breathings of the other The Waters perpepetually moistening the Earth whiles the Earth inspires and ferments the Water but the soft sweetnings and breathings of Air impregnates both as do the Stars in their station and Celestial Rotation actually influence and penetrate the whole From whence we morrally and rationally conclude that Earth made dissoluble converts into Water and Water by heat is raâ—ified into Air. Air consequently by circulation is convertible into Fire and this
food but the Windows of Heaven were set open to refresh and gratifie their thirsty appetite And thus the Creation was unacquainted with fear whiles our Ancestor stood in a state of Innocency and had for ever so remain'd without contradiction by authority of the Text had not Sin struck out the Character of simplicity The timerous Hare fled not then for fear nor did the Cunney shelter her self in the burrough The Hind calv'd naturally without corruscations claps of thunder were then no help to disburden her Nor did the Bear lick her Cubs into shape or form for in the beginning was no deformity The Pellican in those days I perswade my self pickt not those wounds in her tender breast infeebling her self to relieve her young ones Nor did the Ostridge conceal her Eggs dreading or fearing the crush of the Elephant Nor can I hardly perswade my self in these halcion days that the Swan as now sang a lacrimy to her Funeral nor the Phenix fire her Vrn to generate her Species Aligators surely in the minority of time were not so ravenous as to prey upon Passengers Nor did the Crocadile dissemble his tears to moisten the Funerals of his fellow Creature The Plover I discover flew then with the Tassel and the Pheasant I fancy kept flight with the Falcon. Nor did the Partridge know Engin nor Noosie-thread nor dreaded nor feared he the flight of the Goshawk Nor can I think otherwise than to say in those days the Lark was any time dared with the Hobby Surely Nature in those days was divinely exercised to preserve in Unity and unite in Harmony the Creatures God had blest in this blessed Creation because then to know no other Law but that of Sympathy which is naturally of kind but so alienated now and in a sense so degenerated as if no other Law was ever established Now the Generations past and our worthy Ancestors as the vertuous in this Age will labour to abolish this unnatural antipathy if when mutually to strengthen one another in the doctrine of Christianity which ought to be the standard among the pious in profession lest peradventure we relinquish our soveraign health so draw on our heads the Curse of Disease For to fly from Sanity to seek a cure in Sickness is to run head-long into the Water to preserve our selves from drowning In the beginnings of time as it was of old no noise of oppression allarm'd the Land nor dreaded any man the sence of invasion Then it was that priviledges were as sacred as life and the whole Creation seem'd all in common Ianus I fancy liv'd not in those days when the inside was made legible and intelligible by the outside Modesty and innocency were then alamode and simplicity with piety the newest dress For Heaven was pleas'd then to dwell upon Earth but Earth must now be rarified into Heaven God then immediately converst the Creature as by Mediation Christ interceeds the Father And were it not that Christ is our Saviour and Advocate we should be left without a Plea and Sentence denounc'd beyond dispute against us But Christ is risen in whom we hope to rise and lost Adam is restor'd by the Redeemer of the World So that what Adam lost on the one hand in Paradise Christ our Mediator has redeemed on the other Thus was the Beast and the Cattle made and thus every Creature made after its kind knew no other Law than the Law of kind for instinct of kind was naturally inated and ingrafted into all as into one and if so it were impossible for the Creature to degenerate where a command as hitherto was never violated Then it was that the Divinity of the Majesty of God most splended and gloriously shin'd on the Creation for how could it be otherwise when the beauty of the Creator like a new risen Star reflected on the Creature In Edens fair Field no Brambles grew nor was sterility known in her borders The Trees then lookt big because burd'ned with Fruit and their blushing heads bowed down themselves to the courteous hand that endeavoured to reach them The Earth knew nothing but fulness and plenty since every thing was supplied with prolifick Vertue and nourish'd in it self by the primar cause Nature directs the ends of Germination No Cankers nor Caterpillars bred out of putrefaction nor were Northern blasts injurious to any thing nor was there any fatal stroke of Diseas for every thing stood in its primitive purity and Death was out-lawed and Sin an Exile or at leastwise a rerrour unknown or unthought of nor do I err when to say at that time uncreated O blessed Creation because God had blest it from the beauteous Ray and Beam of Himself Whose radient Morning could scarce raise a blush before Titan was ready to unvail his face Whose pleasures were boundless because then unlimited for excess and intemperance were strangers in her Courts And whose Garden full frought with Flowers and Aroma's flourish'd with encrease since hitherto the Serpent had not tainted the Fruit. And the Earth of it self brought forth in abundance whose Womb was the Storehouse and Factory of Treasures Gold grew in Ophir as naturally in those days as Lead is drawn up in the Peek of Derby-shire And Cattle by kind were raised and encreased as putrefactive Excrements convert into Insects But I cease not to wonder since thy Works are so wonderful and to admire thy ways because so miraculous Thus Heaven and Earth were seemingly united and the Creation bended no Knee to any Government save that of its Soveraign Lord and Maker Nor was any thing made that knew any Lord excepting the Lord of Heaven and Earth Nor had the Creator as yet made man a King or Vice-Roy of the Creatures in the Creation All the World all this while was but one Common-Weal and the Tree of Life in the midst of the Garden and nothing as hitherto that God had created had tasted the bitter effects of Death Oblessed and sacred Government upon Earth when Governed by the Royal Law of Heaven which certainly had remained in that blessed State had not Sin by consent eclips't and defac'd it almost to extinguish this beautiful Aurora But let 's tack about now and begin to examine the genuine nature and complication of Animals together with the natural composition of Man whom we find at this day complicated of Elements of all which he consists if when to consider his material parts And as Adam was abstracted from the Womb of the great World so was Woman her self an abstract from him whose Soul as an Astrum or an Essence Royal is no where to be found in the Texture of the Universe Wherefore we have considered Adam super-natural whose Creation to me seems a small incarnation as Montanus says as if God in this Work had multiplied Himself And tho' Adams Original keep not time with the Creation however we are Children of Adams Generation But the World because daily fill'd with revolution ever since the
exuberant and miraculous Womb not only those innumerable and inexhaustible Treasures as the Principles and Elements but also whatever besides them was made visible was by Wisdom drawn forth out of this immense Deep And to whatever had Sense by Life and Motion Nature by Ordination gave it a beginning but Light and Life she had not power to give for that sprung spontaneously from the Divine Fiat which great work with the great Creator took up but seven days tho seven times seven is adjudged too little nay had I said Months are supposed little enough if when attempting to compleat a Philosophick Operation So that now the Darkness because disappearing the glorious and beautiful Ray of Light suddenly and at once invades all the Universe for after Separation by Divine Ordination every individual as to Vertue and Purity in its innate Quality arose up from obscurity And because relinquishing its Earthy fecula elevated it self according to Dignity correspondent also with the Purity of Matter The Sun therefore with the Moon and the Stars exalted themselves and surmounting the Aether were supreamly ranged in a Divine Order The Elements also they separated themselves into four Divisions or distinct Classes whereby to illustrate this imbellish'd Creation and the Principles because lock'd up in every individual whereby to make permanent by the Law of Perfection began to ferment which the Vulgar understand not for should they be separated purified and reconjoyned a new Creation would inevitably ensue in the Microcosm or the little World as by Divine Appointment it never ceases daily to influence and operate in the Macrocosm From whence all Celestials appear immortal most fiery luminous subtile and bright and by the Divinest made distant and remote were separated from all impure and immund dregs and because excavated into Rotundity they elevated themselves and flew up at once for which cause also Nature of her self desires a round form for things Eternal as being most perfect permanent and indeficient On the contrary it follows that Terrestial things are subject to corruption mutation and death because contrarieties are joyned in their elementary Composition and wherewith the dreggs and impurities of matter were mixed as at first with what was impure otherwise the produce that had proceeded from them would have been beyond dispute Subjects immortal Nor could there ever have been any Generation for without contrariety of qualities in Elements there had never been alteration nor mutation of form and all would have had but one Face without distinction remaining equally in purity and subtilty And tho cloathed with its own Ornament of Beauty and Swavity yet wanting matter whereon to impress formation would become deficient indigent and destitute of Creation It was necessary therefore to mix subtilty of substance with the gross and impure faecula of matter for where nothing but Clarity and Purity remains there of necessity can be no Action and where no Action is there can be no Patient seeing what is pure wants act of Power over that also which is as pure and this End and Operation is Natures Work of Separation for preservation of its Essence and Vital Encrease For if the Earth and her Fruits were as pure as the Heavens all Animals would live as long as Celestial Incholasts But Nature by the Divinest has ordained a Law that whatever partakes of Matter or Corporiety should dwell about that which is also Corporial and that which is most corruptible and inquinate about that which is also likest unto it but the Earth as subordinate is the most precipitant of Bodies consequently most gross and of all things most corruptible nothing therefore can proceed or be deducible from it but what is naturally most agreeable unto it wherefore its Corruption Sordities and Impurities must also be rarified by progress of Separation When therefore it s more pure Substance is extracted and exalted by a true and Magnetick Philosophical Medium Nature of necessity begins there all her Actions and in separation all is found And the Spirit of God moving upon the Face of the Waters was by Incubation or supream Act of Power by the determinate Wisdom and Counsel of God the immediate and proper cause of Separation for here you may read that the Spirit of God divinely moved upon the Face of the Waters And here also you may consider and deliberately understand that the Spirit of God inspired them with Vegetation otherwise of themselves how could they bring forth For the Chaos had a Passive but no Active Spirit in it till God by Wisdom roused up the Ferch or the hidden Life therein concealed and illuminating or kindling the Commassated Matter by the Ray and Majesty of his Divine Spirit that separated the pure from that that 's impure which could be no otherwise since no impure thing can enter nor center where the whole is pure And thus the Angel Gabriel salutes the Blessed Virgin with Hail Mary full of Grace God is with thee the glory of Females Now this Virgin was a Native and true Israelite and had not hitherto known her Husband which Virgin conceives by the Holy Ghost and was a Miraculous and a Spiritual Birth so that we may consider there 's nothing impossible with God the Creator that made the World when in love to incarnate himself to redeem it And Moses he tells you That when God had breathed into Adam our Protoplast the breath of Life he then became a living Soul not that Adam was destitute of a Natural Soul but of a Divine and Spiritual Life which also implies a supernatural state in which excellent state our Protoplast stood when God had transformed his Earth into Heaven and in which pure state he for ever had stood had he stood in simplicity and the Will of his Maker for what we sow that shall we reap and nothing is quickned except it die Mortification therefore precedes Regeneration we must all die to Sin to live to Righteousness But the Spirit of God moved upon the Waters which Act of Power was no sooner performed but the Waters of themselves incessantly brought forth and every created thing that God had made by a Divine and Soveraign Act of Power began to Operate Vegetate and Fructuate who surrounded the Constellations with a Crystalline Firmament and cloathing the Principles which stood naked before him with a Body suitable to their necessity gave Laws and Ordinances to Nature as Substitute immediately to let loose the Universal Spirit whereby to vegetate encrease and multiply to form also to animate and impregnate Bodies but Nature of her self because bounded with periods admits Death inevitably to invade all Compounds for were it otherwise there needed no Separation and Nature preadventure would become sloathful and idle Consequently the Fabrick of the whole Creation would again redact and result in a Chaos Separation therefore is of absolute necessity whereby to distinguish the pure from the impure the fair and immaculate from the most pollute and unclean which
engendred or otherwise by Putrefaction have received a new State through Fermentation all which Productions are manifest Arguments of Life and Spirit as also of Vegetation The Texture therefore of this great World clearly discovers and demonstrates its animation where the Visibility of Earth manifestly represents the Impure Gross and Natural Basis and the Elemental Waters because circulating about it assimilates also the Venal Blood actuating and fermenting in every Body where the vital Pulse also operates as is seen in the admirable Flux and Reflux of the Ocean and the Air of necessity the Vehickle for Spirits wherein this vast Creature meaning the Creation breath's invisibly tho peradventure not altogether nor in any part insensibly and the Interstellar Skies and Aetherial Waters the Vital Parts whiles the Sun Moon and Stars are the animating Spirits and supersensual Fires that warm the Creation But this kind of Philosophy will puzle the Putationer as the Primitive Truth of the Apostles confounded the Romans So Moses's Philosophy in the Rudiments of the Creation will be as little understood as the Tracts of Hermes the Tâ—â—mudist's Cabalist's Caldeans Egyptians aud Arabians if when to consider the possibility of Nature which is impossible without supernatural discoveries and should we otherwise conclude than by Divine Authority we lick up the Froth of every sottish Generation so usher to posterity that Atheistical Opinion calculated by Imaginarist's that the Creator slept whiles the Chaos of it self without Divine direction fell into this beautiful Order as we now behold it which if but to think so is a Sin of Impiety and an Error so enormous never enough to be lamented But all such Inquietudes we remit them to their destiny since to carry such and so many Furies in their own Bosoms whereby to hurry and torment themselves whose unwholsome Principles because nautious to themselves would stamp their impression on those that suck them in so that one would think such Souls mingled with Clay and because in the limit and circumstance of Time are iâ— some measure confin'd to Earth's sublunar mixts and by the World so severely intangled that like Birds in Limetwigs the more they flutter the faster they find themselves intangled in such a state I perswade my self there 's no Divine Speculation nor Visional Faith whereby to see the invisible state of things as they stand nakedly simply and purely in themselves of which these Visible Objects are but Natural Representatives This perswasion directs to me an unregenerate state because when not to partake of a Supernatural Birth the Soul therefore that 's immerged with Sin Darkness conducts it to a dismal destiny deeply shadowed under the decays of Elements and impossible without a Miracle to make a flight above the World since by innate inherency its partaker of the World. But the Stars if when to consider them the Almighty's Library where every Star is the Volumn of a World and every World a sumptuous Globe divinely held in the Hand of its Maker for such they were and such they are not that these sublime and eminent Elevations were only made for Mortals confusedly to gaze at no I 'me perswaded rather to excite and stir up admiration whereby to elevate and quicken our Devotion above our selves when to behold such Majesty fixt in the Creation for are not these Luminous and Illustrious Bodies which we behold hung up in that great Vortrice of Heaven Celestial Lamps to illuminate the Universe and not only to illuminate but animate and vegetate so in conclusion influence and impregnate the Creation 'T is true that Heaven is a Paradise for Souls and a Divine Reception for the Divinity it self but not that I prophane to term it a Habitation when alluding that Heaven contains the Divinest since Heaven is every where where ever God is whose Holy Presence institutes it Immutable Immeasurable and Eternal like himself whose Nature transmutes it into his own likeness and puts it into such a Divine Capacity that for ever its uncapable of the periods of Death Heaven therefore is the Divine Habitation of God and the Light of Heaven the Divinity of God the blessed Society there Saints and Angels and there it is that the Prophets and Prophetesses with Apostles and Evangelists daily Prophesie for there every Day is a daily Sabboth and Elohim betwixt the Cherubs is the Lord Iehovah But the Evening and the Morning were the second Day so that twenty four Hours nor more nor less do but compleat a Natural Day when as the whole Tract of Time in its Natural Progress appears to me but one Day Super-natural of which our Ancestors as also our selves from Sacred Authority had these Divine Speculations so that if to consider that two Days natural could operate such a change in the great Creation we may rationally conclude and as modestly determine the residue an Argument to evince the Generations For could I but seriously point out to the Creature the Blessed Creators mystical Operation which is altogether impossible I might then peradventure prove an Instrument to some whereby to moderate and disintangle Passion pursuant only after perishing Objects and for ought I know blot out the Prejudice and Animosity of others meaning such as seditiously sow Discention among the Brethren endeavouring thereby to reap the fruits of their own conjectural Imaginations which to do but undoes one another by violating the Sacred Laws of God as that also of Nature and of true Religion since the Scriptures by a Divine Authority require that every one examine himself and seriously and sedately study a Reformation Then were the Waters beneath the Heaven by Divine Appointment gathered together and those Invisible Waters above the Heavens rallied themselves and separated apart which admirable and wonderful Act or Operation occasioned a trepidation all over the Chaos for till then the Waters intermingled with the Waters and the Elements as Inmates spread themselves among them till God in his Wisdom stirred up the Magnet and then the Waters immediately attracted so by Collision broke the Bond of Unity for when so great a change happned in the whole of necessity every individual separated apart In which admirable progress every one had its station yet was it by appointment and the Providence of God so that the more sublime the matter was by so much the higher it ranged it self removing more remotely from its own Faecula when on the contrary to admiration the more Gravity it had by so much the closer it adhered to its Recrement and in this Operation the Fire claim'd the Precedency but next the Fire the Air pleaded Succession so that these two Elements become as it were invisible and which also by reason of a Spirituallity administred only to the Vital parts But Water and Earth when to consider their Corporiety their Gravity their Unity and more Consubstantial Parts and because also Synonimous with the Creature it cloathed and fed it with Prolifick Vertue for whatever any thing is of it self of
the same likeness it naturally produceth and such as are the constitution of Elements and Principles such also are our Native and Corporial Constitutions To consider things therefore as they are in themselves we need not to borrow Spectacles from others for if when to consider the Sun universally shines notwithstanding the Blind Man he seeth it not and so of Eclipses tho some have seen them what then their natural Reason and Understanding can't reach them however Credit go's a great way in the case The Blind-man perhaps he swallows a Fly and if he do and feel it not what prejudice is there in it when a Fly in the Glass to him that hath Eyes is not only disturb'd but in some measure terrified because fearing to surfeit if not to suffocate Circumspection therefore and the Vertue of Temperance circumscribe to us the Mediums for long Life when excess of any thing overthrows the whole and would even do so to this stupendious Creation should it in any thing exceed with intemperance The Vertue therefore and the Office of Water is to cleanse to moisten to mollific and dissolve to wash also and purific the the outside And this peradventure was Iohn Baptists Ordinance when only to blot out the Character of Circumcision which indeed was then prevalent among the Iews till the Baptism of Jesus of more Energy and Vertue took place to purge out Sin by Internal Purification and which also is that Baptism of the Holy Ghost which Iohn proclain'd was the Baptism of Fire so that these two Ordinances and Divine Operations were vastly different and distinct from one another for the one only washes but the other purifies the first to brush off the outward defilements but the latter to blot out Internal Pollution Consider it therefore you Christian Professors and live not by Profession but the life of Christianity And the Divinest said Let the dry Land appear which was no sooner said but it immediately appeared Now dry Land which is the solid and fix'd part of the Creation all Interpreters agree that its literally Earth and properly is such and generally so received as is by Expositors and others concluded And this dry Earth I have also considered was that only which was left after separation of the Elements to which also was added the dignity of an Element and because ranged and superscribed in the fourth Clasis of the Macrocosm is confirm'd the most solid and most fix'd part of the whole concentring it self upon its own proper Basis and impending on nothing by a Divine Ordination but it s own equal Poize and the Will of God so that neither upwards nor downwards Extension nor Demension can any ways remove displace or unlodge it because God through Wisdom has inspired into it the Magnet of Fixation Gravity and Station which confirms it a central and fixt residence and the Waters to rowl perpetually about it The Air also to incircle and surround it and the Fire above all to surmount above it yet every of them is restricted by Providence within the Circular Globe or Firmament of Heaven But where are we now got above the Elements no probably but as far as our Eyes will carry us no mortal sees farther Our Basis I perceive then will be understood the Earth and Earth and Water compleat but one Globe so that of the whole and visible appearance here seems to remain but one moity left and the rather to confirm it it 's obvious to every one that the Firmament of Heaven intersects betwixt them for the Elements of Fire and Air disappearing they become invisible so that what remains now save only Earth and Water which are Subjects most solid and visible to us Not that I impose this Doctrine upon any Man nor do I offer it as a noval of my own since therefore of it self it is so demonstrable let it carry its evidence in the Frontispiece of Time. Earth therefore and Water are constipated Corelates as hitherto we have observed them visible Elements and the difference betwixt them is easily reconcileable when to consider the Gravity of the one and Fluidity of the other yet both impregnated with Vital Faculties and to each is super added a Prolifick Vertue and because daily influenced by Stars and Planets are by the Divinest inspired with Life and Vegetation But Earth is the Nurse and Supply of Elements as is Water the Sister and the Mother of Earth and because both filled with Vertual Production they fail not to send forth their daily encrease whose Prolifick Breasts minutely sprung up naturally replenished to supply the Universe But I must caution my self what I say now least peradventure there are some will decry any Hypothesis and what if they do I matter not much since to leave behind me Proselites enough after my Death to assert and maintain That the World had a beginning this is undeniable That Time sprung from Eternity this is also indisputable That Generation succeeded Time this is beyond all dispute unquestionable And that Generation terminates in Death is altogether infallible That the Elements and Principles were lodg'd in the great Mass of the Chaos is true That Fire because of its Dignity superceeded the rest is most true And that Air because of its purity climb'd up after the Fire is certainly as true leaving the Waters rolling too and fro fluctuating incircling and inspiring the Earth and the Earth as Central to all the rest by Wisdom and Providence was concentrate on its Basis. Now tell me if you please what false Doctrine's here and I 'll tell you that our Modern Philosophers will allow it Orthodox as the precedent Generations and Philosophers before them so govern'd themselves as to assert and vindicate it So that as I design no Captivity by my Discourse nor intend I any Conquest or Triumph over others only the exercise of every Man's Reason compelling no Man to the dictates of my conclusions Give me leave therefore such to advise as converse with Scripture or correspond with Reason and the possibility of Nature such I mean as profligate those Fictious Notions of Heathens and Infidels and Atheistical Antiseripturists whose suggestions are only of an imaginary Being of that Superlative Being whose real Essence is existent in himself pre-existing Time and is the God of Nature God blessed for ever And the Earth brought forth Grass Here 's Natural Production and this Natural Product spreading it self abroad in a very short progress run into multiplication and because the Creator destinated it to the Creatures use it became Nutritious and Salubrious to them consequently agreeable and convertible to their Nature But the Apostle tells us That all Flesh is Grass and as the Grass fadeth and withereth away so Flesh and Blood our daily Morts prognosticate them also in a state of Corruption and in process of time to admit of Solution Every thing therefore that is in a capacity of being dissolved that thing most certainly becomes invisible and such a
I call Motion and the perpetual rotation of this admirable and imbellished Creation notwithstanding Copernicus asserts the Contrary when to tell us that the Earth of it self has a motion however I know none except that of Vegatation And now the great Creator that made the Light commands that Lights appear in the 〈◊〉 Number and divinely ranging them in the Frontispiece of Heaven it denotâ—s unto us the aforesaid Separation of that which is pure from that that 's imâ—ure Fo◠〈◊〉 Firmament at once 〈…〉 with 〈◊〉 whose Bodies were innumerable 〈◊〉 and luminous and 〈◊〉 made to shine all over the Universeâ—â—hey also illuminate and impregnate the Creation and that to admiration he hung theâ—â—â—word in his sublime Sanctuary to discrim◠〈◊〉 Day from the obscurities of 〈◊〉 and to mark out the Winter 〈◊〉 Summer Season For they 〈◊〉 made Signs and Expositors of Seasons to remonstrate days 〈◊〉 â—imes to prognosticate Thus we â—â—ad and as constantly we observe the Heavens adorned with these beautiful Bodies so that their operations we feel and sometimes their effects but their ends as hitherto are not generally understood tho frequently thâ—â—ght 〈◊〉 and descanted by putatioâ—â—rs who fancy it Sacriligious when to mediate on them or if but to enquiâ—â— into the order of the Creation supposing the Creator like themsâ—â—ves but nigardly when to conceal such an excellent and admirable 〈…〉 least peradventure every 〈◊〉 should pâ—â— into the Model so 〈…〉 Maker by the Mediums of Artâ— But Gods divinâ— Oracles surpasseth mans reason 〈◊〉 wisdome instructs us the â—â—â—â—ods of the Creation nor was 〈◊〉 ignorant of these Celestial 〈◊〉 who pointed out to us the Divin◠〈◊〉 of Stars how some of them 〈◊〉 and how some move themselves who cites to us the motion of 〈…〉 Constellations the forms and â—â—nfigurations also of the Signs of the Zodiack with the blazing Meteoâ—s and formidable Apparitions the beauty of Orion and the splendâ—ur of the Pliades the lustre of Bootes â—ubulus or Arctophylax the celerity of Mercury and the Rotation of Ursa Major incircling Ursa Minor in opposition to the Crosiers Directors to Artick and the Antartick Poles But what edifies all this to an illiterate Person any more than a Clerum at the Commencement in Cambridge ignorance I must confess is an o'rgrown Infant and the greatest Enemy and Opposer of Art which ought to be shun'd as a Monster in nature and above all things abhor'd as some mortal Contagion or thing worse could worse be supposed For ignorance and impudence they poison our Faith and of future hope would have us to suspect the enjoyment of the excellency of those divine things whereof now we know little more than part For to read in the beautiful face of the Firmament we discover the invisibillity of things made visible which manifests to us the end of the Creation So that I prophane not nor would I be thought erronious when if only to assert that the Stars made visible are Angels only explicated and the Saints shall shine as the Stars in Glory consequently that Angels are Stars complicated and as the Star Hesper is the Suns Aurora so the day Star of Regeneration is the Son of God to light us up to his glorious habitation it is true that as the Night is opposite to the Day so Sin interposeth betwixt God and the Creature we must carry the Cross to purchase the Crown and divide the Day from obscurities of the Night which without a Metaphor is the Light from Darkness Sin from Sanctity Death from Life and which indeed are sublime operations fit only for him that divinely operates The frontispiece therefore or visibility of the Firmament God noted out to us for Signs and for Seasons so for Days and for Years whereby to prophesie of those fatal Events frequently impendent ore impenitent people but the Seasons declaratively make demonstrative of heat so do they of cold as at other times of rain and â—lso of fair weather because visibly read in the face of the Stars Exhalations Corruscations and Embodied Clouds The days also numerate the date of the Creation and the Nights direct us to read Lectures in the Heavens Thus we see that we see nothing except we see and understand by the Wisdome of God the excellency and beauty of those sublime things pointed out to us in the mysteries of the Creation viz. how the Ray of Light profligates Darkness and the Glory of the Majesty mortifies Death the consideration whereof sweeteens all difficulties but the blessed fruition ravishes the Soul and makes it infinitely more pleasant and dilectable than temporal sweets affect the sence And God the Creator made two great Lights the Sun and the Moon whose different progress directs unto us a different appointment the Sun as abovesaid to rule the Day but the Moon by reflection to govern the Night So that the Sun by Divine ordination and the Providence of God superceeds the Moon but the Moon by a peculiar virtue influenceth the Ocean and adorns the Universe The Majesty of the Sun is admired by the Persians so is that of the Moon adored by the Indians Now the Suns warm body moderates the Earth and would peradventure in some measure callifie it did not the moist Air generously intermediate And the Moon perhaps would frigidate the Ocean did not the Suns soveraign warm Beams mildly and sweetly by influence nourish it What illuminates the Orbs and what inspires the Ocean if not Sun and Moon by the Providence of God that vegetates and impregnates the Creatures in Creation So that if when to consider the Majesty of the Sun that incessantly moves without intermission in the Central Orbs and every Angle of the Universe whose defused Ray spreads upwards and downwards and every way to influence with heat and motion and because enricht and adorned with such eminent qualifications as the majesty of Light and the excellency of Beauty it might probably invite Sandivogius the Philosopher to superscribe him the Vehicâ—lum or Tabernacle for God which Hypothesis is refuted by Basil Valentine and contradicted by Scriptural Authority For I will build my Tabernacle and dwell among men and the Saints they shall shine as the Stars in Glory But the Sun beyond dispute is the most glorious Creature that God has Created in this stupendious Creation because of its purity and superlative Clarity since totally separated from all its dregs whose inside and outside we made Synonimous formd out of pure Principles of Life and Heat whose rapid motion gives action to the Orbs and cloaths all the Stars with his Lustre and Splendour making them shew beauteous by the lustre of his brightness and because by the Divinest deckt and adorn'd with Glory he lives without compeer nor has he any Corival where note he 's a Monarch and the Parent of Vegetation And such is the Moon tho a faint flattering Ray if when compared with the Sun yet she illustrates unto us from the same Original and because adapted from
adequate primordials in her occidental Cressant she naturally displays a Lunar clarity when in her Oriental purity an incomparable brightness and tho' by reason of distance She wants a natural warmth yet in her Progress she spreads forth of splendour whereby she sends Beauty to the ends of the Ocean The Tides themselves also are a Lunar flux and such is the frail imbicility of Females For the Moon has a Monarchy within her self yet directs She by the generous Beam of her Soveraign who by Wisdome and Providence of the Supreamest Good that governs the whole and also the parts is made to nourish and refresh the Creation so that to make things plain by explaining my self peradventure may bring my Discourse into suspition were the Vulgar my Judges who I fancy by this have already doomed and brought me under the calamity of a Lunatick The residue of the Stars the Divinest also he placed them in order by particular classes and gave to every one by a grant from Heaven a peculiar vertue and different operation one to dignifie Earth into the purest Gold another to make Silver shine in the Mines a third to scatter Iron Stone underneath the Surface a fourth to discover Quickâ—silver fluid a fift lays open the Mines of Tin and a sixth the beauteous Mettalline Copper but the seventh creates the Earth into Oar which by smelting at the Mills is convertible into Lead but there are Other and various coagulations besides these seaven as allowed by Philosophers the product and progeny of Erratick Stars and such is Cat-silver Mine Oars and Minerals mixt Metals also with various complications Then their 's Talk and Realgar with Zink Bismuth and Cobolt and the regal Cements of Hal and Malk besides Markasites and Pierites with innumerable concressions of opacous Bodies enough to astonish the Reader if to name them Precious Stones also are of the same progeny and legitimate heirs of Stars and Constellations and tho' some coagulations out-lustre one another as the Cristal because having a polite and shining face so has the Crisolite a Diaphinous-body but the Saphir the Hiacinth the Smaragdine and Emerald together with the Amethist Diamond Ruby and the Carbuncle are all gloriously tinged with a Mettalline Tincture but there are other and Opacous Bodies directing to the Topax beside the Turchas and such is the Onix and admired Granat with the Cornelian needless to nominate in regard by the Mobile so generally understood All which have their Officine and Shops in the Earth where Illiastes and Archeus are Rector and Operator the one to find stuff and the other labour but Demogorgan assists both by the help of Vulcan Thus in brief I have given you a short view of Celestials and how they are adapted Parents of Terrestials Now these glorious and luminous Lamps the Stars were kindled by the Divinest to illuminate the World and God lifted them up and set them in the Firmament as Oracles and Ornaments to adorn the Universe whose signature and impressions are perpetually imprest upon Earths soft Table to influence and impregnate it with prolifick vertue For the Sun and Moon shews us Heaven and Earth in a lesser Character than most men dream of and because having a magnetick vertue and principle in themselves the first fills the World with heat and activity but the latter because immerg'd with passive qualifications influenceth fluidity and the race of Females The Sun therefore we superscribe him Masculine but the Moon every one intitles Feminine where note as these Luminaries are made to move consequently so moves the Wheels of Generation and corruption which mutually dissolves all compounded Bodies But the Moon most properly is the Organ of Transmutation as is the Sun the Parent of Generation and these two Luminaries multiply and fructifie every individual as to generation and multiplication for what compound ever was or is there to be found in whole nature that holds not in it self some proportion of the Sun and so of the Moon whereby to confirm it with life and motion so that what Offices soever are performable by these two Luminaries either for preservation of the whole or conservation of part as is the performance for one such also and after the same manner is the like office for all Since therefore such Vertue shines from Celestials what may be expected from Super-Celestials is not Christ the Wisdome the Beauty and the Glory of the Majesty whose admirable amaziâ—g and astonishing brightness shines in the Tracts to the new Ierusalem The holy men of God in former Ages read daily Lectures in this Divine Manuscript and the same Starry Folio since the beginning of the Creation has lain unfolded to this very Generation So that wanting Solomons wisdome and Iobs inspection very few or none do read in it now Surely our Rabbies have lost the Clavis Hermes its true and the Egyptians before him understood and stiled God Minos Solitaria but our great Prophet Moses Iehovah and Elohim so the Cabalists intitled him Aleph Tenebrosum from whence some conjecture the Delphians in their inscriptions direct their Orisons to the unknown God. But the Arabs their Orisons but the Arabs and the Caldeans marks him out Aleph Lucidum So that doubtingly the Key of Knowledge in some measure may be lost otherwise the Alphabet would not seem so unintelligeable unless we have made new Heavens of our own so study them only and forget the old one But the Creation of Harmony who can forget and not forget him that adorns the Universe so fill up his Lamp with Foetid Oyl whose stinking Empyruma instead of Aroma's infects the Altar and offends the Omnipotent But man by the Divinest was Created twofold Visible and invisible Corporeal and Celestial his Elementary Body or visible part of a pure fixt Earth or a deep red Clay but his Soul or Invisibility of an Essence Royal not to be found in the Texture of the great World more intellectual therefore and more supernatural from whence Montanus that great Pantheologist calls Man a small or little Incarnation in which work God was pleased to multiply himself Nor was Man the primitive Work in this blessed Creation but the great World was out of which Man was made whose Principles and Practice ought to be well examined should we resolve to take part for the whole so guess at the frame by a regular proportion And as Man was taken out of this copious World so was the Woman also taken out of Man. For God in his Eternal Idea foresaw that whereof as yet there was no material Copy The Goodness and Beauty of which invited him to Create Man like unto himself and beholding that divine and lively Image of his own inwardly to shine in the Tabernacle of Man he became therewith enamoured with divine Ardency and so loved the Creature that when Sin had defaced it he again restored it by the suffering of that Power by which Man at first was made and created But the Sun and
Sea that â—o amazâ—ment it shines like a Pot of Oyntment and whose magnitude amazes his fellow Creatures Whose Empire is the spacious and bottomless Ocean but himself a Monarch over all in the deeps whose Subjects are the several Clases of Natatiles that pay tribute to him with the loss of their Lives So that what to say of this prodigious Creature I know not nor is any Pen capable to discourse his concealments or fathom the unfathomed depths that conceal him Is not he one of the wonderful Mysteries of the ways of God Whose shining paths discover his ways and whose motion terrifies the eyes of his beholders â— Creature he is that lives void of fear and is as Iob says a King over all the Children of Pride Leviathan therefore if thought requisite to describe him I shall rally him under three several distinctions and the rather because to make him yet more obvious give me leave to rumidge the Ocean and dress up my method whereby to illustrate him in the following order First then by Tradition we entitle him Grampus when because to consider him in his prestine Minority but successively in his Peregrination he assumes to himself that dignity and magnitude that some call him Iubartas When in process of time and becoming yet more formidable some are pleased to superscribe him the Whale or Leviathan whose motion upon the slippery tracts of the Ocean represents him as it were a floating Island And whose excessive bulk and incredible bigness is enough to astonish every beholder when otherwise to consider him on the silty Owse his own weight peradventure hazards to sink him whereby he becomes a prey to the Merchant or otherwise must lie till death release him But of this admirable and eminent Subject there are some so precipitant to preconjecture Iob too copious whiles othersome of a contrary opinion have determined him too brief and altogether concise when because as to their apprehension not to enlarge enough upon him wherefore to reconcile them which is not without difficulty the ignorant and unlearned think he has said too much when by reason of their ignorance they cannot understand him but to the Wise and more Judicious he has said too little and the rather in regard they 'r desirous of knowledge for Wisdome is always known of her Children But Iob that humane Oracle of Learning and Eloquence and as learnned as any man in the study of Astronomy has given such eminent and convincing Encomiums with such solid Arguments of this admirable Creature that every description save that of his own strikes a Discord in the Readers ear whose Mute I confess my self to be and am unwilling therefore to attempt to encounter what neither my Language nor Experience can boast of otherwise than that I have seen this formidable Creature sporting himself in the vast wide Ocean yet this wont priviledge but rather precaution me with reverend submission to a sedate taciturnity and to affix no more Arguments upon this invincible Subject But rather with my Author lay my hand on my mouth and remembring the battle do so no more Since therefore to consult him without any compeer and a Monarch of such a magnitude and vast Dominions should we rumidge all the Elements for a Mate to match him none but his own is found to contain him Wherefore we represent him the Majesty of Mortals whose search we relinquish to correspond with inferiours such are the Porpus the Bottle-Nose and the Shark the Selk Boneto and the Albicore the Moura or Sea Serpent with the Conger Bass Remora Torpedo and the American Snite There is also the Turbet Scate Dolphin Grooper and Cavalla besides the Sturgeon Salmon Trout Lucit Mullet Umbar Barble Tenche c. and thousands more in Salts and Freshes Moreover there are Shell-fish as the Turtle or Tortoise Conct Lobsters Oysters Crabs Cockles Mussels Craw-fish Prawns and Shrimps but these are arm'd all over Another Brigade are Alegators Crocadiles Guianas Bevers Otters and Manitees with many other but such are Amphibious whom I care not to converse with Living Creatures therefore and such as move and have their motion by the mediums of Water are our Subject matter And that God created every invidual made it to live and gave it motion is the strength of my Assertion And that the Waters were the cause of their Life and Motion is the Argument of the Text but that God gave Life and Motion to the Waters that gave Life and Motion to the Creatures therein is my positive and final Conclusion Life then as naturally attends the Creation as the Ray of Light follows the Sun. Nor can any Life issue but what flows from Light as Light it self flows from the Divine Fiat which immaculate Light sprung up from Eternity as Eternity it self shines from the Majesty But since the determinate and original end of Water was not generally understood its nature and office but imperfectly considered its wonderful Vertue and Operation intelligeable only to such whom Wisdome and Nature have duly Educated in God's great School where nothing is taught without wonder and astonishment so that all I can offer relating to this admirable Subject is little more than to say nothing since if I speak any thing I say too much and silence peradventure would better become me rather than so publickly declame and devulge to the World these my Notions and it may be by some thought barren apprehensions that like a Chase in Arra's figurates only the design but wants real power of Life to prompt forward into Motion Which implies such Phaenonima's discover nothing where the genuine truth of any thing admits of a doubt and who will be so presumptous to determine possitives by his own own hesitant and imperfect Conclusions But the Sea as one great and copious Body is acted only by the spirit of Life that in the beginning inspired the Creation and all the Rivers and Rivulets that fluctuate in Islands consequently all those that spread themselves on the Continent what are they but such and so many Meanders running up and down in every Angle representing the Arms Boughs and Branches of this prodigious and Miraculous Creation whose Trunck or Bole is the Ocean it self whose Radix or Root in the Nonage of Time lay conceal'd among the admirable Mysteries of the Creator So that after what manner the Fountains and the Rivers with the Springs and Rivulets became incipid whiles the Ocean it self is impregnated with Salt is another Mystery till serioussy to consider the Quellem or Sand and the multiform variety of Soils in the Earth as also to examine the Bottles of Heaven the burdned and impregnated Clouds that fall and daily distil to replenish the Earth with Aerial Spirits and Prolifick Vertue These also were once one Saline substance when in the great Mass or Volumn of the Ocean whose Texture was alienated in the act of Separation because rarified and purified by Mediums of Air which more properly admits of
fatal Act of Sinning and that every Man because subject to Sin and the slavish Law of his lustful Appetite becomes captivated by the man of Sin so yields himself captive to the Prisons of Death whose outward progression is actually moved by irregular motion of the desires inward But the Heavens we see and the Celestial Incolists how they never since the Creation consented to Sin and as they were so are they still carried about with a rapid motion The reason whereof must necessarily spring from an internal cause and intrinsick principle since intelligences are so ambigious and what is this principle if not the Soul of the World or the Universal Spirit God has put into Nature whereby as a Magnet it retains the matter which labouring to re-assume its former liberty frames to her self a habitation in the Centre and branching into the several Members of the Body makes more room to act and bestir her faculties No wonder therefore that natures are compounded since nothing but the Almighty is without composition Nor is it the great or the lesser World that which transmutes nutrition into blood but the active Spirit of Life and transmutation is that which is indeed the Life of the Body Since material principles therefore are only passive and can neither alter nor purifie the parts we find them in a state to be altered and purified tho not to communicate or dispose themselves to another substance beyond their native intention Wherefore we have considered them altogether finite and therefore have concluded them also determinate Now if this be a secret you may call it so but as truth needs no voucher it s a substantial truth Wherefore to conclude this philosophick Hypothesis let us throw away if possible those two celebrated crutches of pretended modern sanctity and the solemnity of Ceremony and what results but primitive purity which since the Creation has known no deformity And God said in the Text let us now make Man in our own Image let us make him and after our likeness and let them have dominion over the Fish in the Sea the Fowl in the Air over the Cattle also and over all the Earth and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the Earth By this the Creation seem'd to want a Head and less than a Prince is too little to govern it Adam must therefore be a Universal Monarch and sway the Throne and the Regal Scepter And Adam must not only wear Heavens Livery but personate the King of Heaven himself Here the Divinest seems to Summons a Councel and God said in himself let us now make Man not like to any thing already made but let us make him in likeness like our self in our own similitude and likeness let us make him and enlarge his Empire by giving him dominion over all the Fish that swim in the Sea and over all the Fowl that fly in the Air over the Cattle also that move on the Earth and over every living creature that creepeth and moveth the Wisdome of God so divinely ordered This was a large and copious Commission that God intrusted a single Subject withal yet such was the good opinion the Creator had of the Creature that God intrusts Adam with the Stock of the Creation and all the Creatures and every complicated Being that was made comprehended and contained in it And Adam drew all his supplies from above since enricht with the Stock and the Treasures of Heaven nor converst he with any inferiour Subject nor any thing in any respect unsuitable to himself whereby he might indignifie or diminish his Authority In the cool of the Evening he walked with God and in the heat of the day the Aquaducts refresht him Aurora sent him Summons of approach of Day but the Night nor was darkness dreadful to him The Celestial Sun was his daily Tapour and the Catalogue of Stars his hourly Contemplation but the Son of God his perpetual Lamp. So that his outside was bettered by his inside and because richly adorned and divinely beautified he saw no darkness nor the shadow of Death whiles he stood in this innocent State of Perfection For God in the Idea beholding a shape or as I may so say a representation of himself became therewith inamour'd and extreamly loving it would cohabit with it when immediately upon the resolution the operation ensued and then was this great Image the beautiful World or rather the representative of his Maker brought forth and created And God said to himself or the holy Word increase in increasing and multiply in multitudes But to Man only because Lord of the Creation I have endowed him with mind and made him immortal So that if he die the cause of death must necessarily proceed from excess of the body and inequallity of Elements and pray tell me what death is if not a cold icy touch or a dismal darkness of the compounded moist nature adhering only to the sensible World. Let no Man wonder therefore that the light of God which illuminates the World is unlike the Beam or Ray of the Sun that by reason of its fiery and excessive brightness immediately and at once strikes the eye with blindness but rather to the contrary Heavens brighter Glory never at any time dazles the mind since the mind is the Souls ingressive eye that soars up aloft to those elevated Mansions where that light shines that enlightneth every Man already come or to come into the World and is the beauty and glory of light and our saving health that influenceth illuminates and beautifieth the Creation and every Creature and created Being But Man above all because made a Monarch and capable to receive this blessed influence proceeding from God the Majesty of Light and superexcellent brightness that diefies the Soul whiles yet in the Body it s he that 's only blest to contemplate this divine beauty and live up to the Vertue of Piety and Holiness So that Adam in a state of innocency represents as Montanus says a Mortal God and our Heavenly Redeemer an immortal Man if when to consider the blessed Incarnation And thus the things that are were made manifest in time but the things that are and not yet made manifest lie hid and conceal'd in the Divinest himself who is all things in all yet subsists without them manifest only in the mind of Man but invisible to the World and the visible eye except in the act of creating only And as the eminency of all appearing beauties are in the Essence much more pure so great and greater is the disproportion of beauty betwixt this of Earth and the Beauty of Heaven All things therefore subject to the Eye represent to us only things subject to sence or more fully to explain it visible operation whiles the Fabrick of the Body needs and requires those similar things that it cannot with conveniency live well without them But the Beauty and Majesty of invisible Beings are inspected only by intellectual Converse since the
And as light shin'd forth by reason of purity unmasking or unveiling the scenes of darkness that lay hudled up in the hoil of obscurity light as a thing strangely surprized seem'd suddenly to startle because then not to know such a horrid deformity as this we call darkness was in the beginning co-inhabitant with it or conceal'd beneath it for the light of it self was most pure and immaculate in as much as it never entred into unity nor into any association with obscurity or darkness But darkness represents the solitary shadow of some Elementary thing or something substantial wherefore we shall want some solid substance whereby to form our darkness out of and what is more solid than the fixity of Earth or more copious than the bulk of the great Creation when as yet in the Hoil or confused Chaos it lay intermingled and blended together Light must necessarily therefore appear a most glorious Creature which by Divine Act operated in the Separation For God no sooner said Let there be Light and obedient to the Command it immediatly sprung up which by reason of its purity and sublime clarity exalted it self and fill'd all the Universe so made visible discovery of things that lay conceal'd in the commassated mixture or Mass of Elements And this miraculous Work was accomplisht for Man that he might admire the excellency of his Maker and raise his speculations to such a divine pitch that by visibles he might conclude since such ornaments of beauty and swavity hung about them that greater excellencies and diviner curiosities of necessity must adorn the more invisible part by reason what 's circumferated and made visible to us is only the shadow of that more glorious invisibility visible only to Seraphins and Cherubims Arch-Angels and Angels together with the Saints and the Sons of God. Farther yet to comfirm these Royal Priviledges Adams prerogative seems infinitely enlarged for all the Beasts on the Earth with the Fowl of the Air and the Fish in the Sea were given him for Food by a Royal Grant from Heaven to eat of but not to riot so dishonour his Creator and every Vegetable besides the Race of Animals were not only allotted him but given for nutrition So that in effect the whole Creation consequently every individual production by Commission from the Divinest was given him for sustentation And so great a favourite was Adam in Paradise and such great kindness had his Creator for him that he made him Lord over all the Creation and every thing that was was made serviceable to him nay in such veneration he stood with the Creatures that all the Creation doubled their obedience Here I fancy the innocent Lamb because then not knowing the terrours of death proffered his Throat to the Shrines of the Altar and the fatted Calf was so far from fear that he dreaded not the formidable stroke of Separation the Kids with the Flock sported then with the Wolf and ran about the Bear sometimes for diversion Thus the Creatures made sport and pastime with danger as if Death and Destruction were sanctuary to them so naturally was Innocency implanted in Eden or the Suburbs of Heaven that nothing knew its enemy because no enemy to know Unity and Harmony were inseparable Companions and every individual knew no Argument but Love whose Law was alike forcible to others as the Law of Harmony was united in it self The Mallard in those days soar'd with the Falcon and the timerous Hare lay down with the Hound The Leopard and the Tigre sported with the Herds and the Herren with the Shad swam without dread of the Porpus the Dove and the Lark took flight with the Tassel nor was any thing of Emulation known then in the Creation Innocency shin'd naturally in every thing and its excellency in the beginning knew no limitation for nothing could sorrow nor any thing grieve in as much as there was no real cause of suffering Nor could any thing languish nor be sensible of smart because as hitherto pain was uncreated Fear was a thing altogether unexperimented and Death and the Grave such eminent strangers as never to be apprehended What a pure State the Creation then stood in worthy our contemplation and the admiration of all Men. But Adam too niggardly he consults the Elements and Elements because having periods of their own by praedestinated Ordination are lockt up in death Adam therefore mixing simplicity with impurity which of it self stood in the limit of disobedience cojoyned himself with finite adherences so drew down upon himself the shortness of Life and on the succeeding Generations the issues of Death which in time diminished so by degrees extinguished the beauteous and luminous Ray of Life that shined gloriously within him and was sanctuary without him and would ever have gloriously shined in his Posterity had not â—e remisly by one single consent complyed with his Consort so vainly to extinguish it Now when God had made a survey of the Creation the Workmanship of his hands and divinely blessed it he placed therein the likeness of himself the single identity of his Divine Goodness which could not go forth because the everlasting Arms of the Majesty of God so sacredly limited and so sweetly confined it that in this Divine and Cristalline Coagulum the Majesty of Heaven beheld himself who viewing the several Classes of the Creatures which by Wisdome he divinely had foreseen in the Idea it so greatly renewed the ardency of his Love which continued and augmented the blessing upon them for Love has that singularity to shine in it self and in its operation always to renovate Thus God so loved the World he had made that he gave us Himself in giving us his Son that whosoever believed and persevered in him should never die but have Life everlasting Thus God made the World to protrude and vegetate and because it should conceive and daily bring forth he placed an appetite and an immortal Soul therein and fill'd it as Hermes says with Divine imagination so that the Sun and Celestials fell in Love with the Harmony and because it was beautiful they married with it and this great Solemnity was Celebrated at first when God laid his Ordinance of Multiplication upon it Which Divine Institution has been punctually observed and kept inviolable ever since the beginning and will undoubtedly so long remain and so long continue till Generation and Time shall be no more And now the Deeps began to break up when the Rivers and Rivulets with murmuring Streams silently invaded the florid Plains The Mountains and the Hills also look'd big with Flocks whiles the Valleys and Savannas with the fragrant Meadows were abundantly crowded with Herds of Cattle All the Birds in the Air now turn'd Serenades and every Flower and flourishing Blossom perfum'd the Air with delicious Aroma's The lofty Cedar then lifted up his head and the Martial Oak and the Ash stood by him so did the Poplar and the spreading Elme but the trembling
Asp shak'd his Palsie Head. The Vine in those days embraced the Olive and the Eglantine intangled himself with the Rose Thus every thing whilst naturally inamoured with its like the Woodbine or Hony Succle tied knots about the Hedges The Bee return'd home with loaden Thighs and the Flocks of Sheep laid down their Fleece The Oestridge deplum'd his feathery Crest and the Stork retaliated kindness with gratitude The Horse in those days spurn'd not at this Rider nor did the Lion know the Tyranny of Invasion Alegators in the beginning were not devourers noâ— were there known any Birds of Prey The Vulture and the Tigre liv'd not then upon Vermine for Morts were altogether unknown nor was any thing infectious that might nautiate the Elements every thing God had made stood in the beauty of Harmony and whatever was made and by wisdome created that thing beyond dispute was most certainly good Adam was invited to this great Solemnity which was then of it self but one single Family nor had he any compeer nor was there any to controul him except the Divinest that great Oracle of Heaven that breath'd Life into him And every Act that Adam made was registred by the Creatures in this blessed Creation and most sacredly and inviolably kept in Paradice till Sin and Impiety spoil'd his Principallity And then it was this great Parliament broke up and the Members discontented began to withdraw so by degrees refused his Protection And Adam considering himself neglected and uncapable any longer to maintain his Prerogative folicits new favourites but they forsook him or rahter Adam forsook himself but did not know it for Sin had so strangely disfigured and disguised him that none of his Subjects could remember to know him or think or believe him their natural Prince suspecting him rather some forreign Invader previously insinuated to divest them of Community and supplant them of those supernatant Priviledges granted them in the beginning from their Soveraign Donor So that the Creatures at once desert him and not him only but his Government also which look'd but little now when formerly so great that all the Creatures in the Creation paid servillity unto him Thus Adam amaz'd to find himself forsaken makes a League with the Elements to reinforce his Authority but they when examin'd could not cement the breach nor in whole nor in part re-establish enthrone and eternize his grandure because having ends and periods of their own he therefore complies to walk the shades of Death and Deaths frigid Zone and cold Icy touch no sooner approaches but invades the Elements so lets the compound crumble into dust which is the ultimate period of all Elementary mixts that ever was that at present is or ever shall be in the progress of time Thus the Heaven and the Earth were finished and all the Host of them and on the seventh day God ended his Work the Work which he had made and rested on the seventh day from all his Work which he had made and blessed and sanctified it So that now the great Work of the great Creator was by the word Fiat determined and finished when the beauteous Earth most sumptuously adorned with Celestial Ornaments like the Queen of Honour came splendidly forth with Virgin purity to celebrate her Espousals whose Bride-maids were Nature and the Celestial Incholists but the Spectators and Relations were the various sorts of Animals together with the multiform generation of individuals that with general applause and unanimous consent gave an approbation suitable to the present occasion Here might be seen all the Beasts in the Forrest hand in hand as it were coupled together if not improper to say so and ranging themselves into an excellent order came forth to illustrate this great Solemnity And here also all the Fish that swam in the Ocean embodied themselves as if they were but one Fin and with the Fowl of the Air so exactly moved and with such a reserv'dness so equal was their order as if all of them had but one single Wing to accilerate and celeritate their admirable motion In this excellent posture all the Creation stood when attending the approach of this admirable Union At length the Sun appears her amiable beloved who came cloathed with Lustre and excessive Beauty and all the Host of Heaven his illustrious Convoy Whose Harmony was the Spheres and every thing that had Life exirted it self to move by measure as if all the Creation by gradual motion with a reserv'd gravity mov'd the Orbs at once Thus the Creation was compleatly finished and Heaven and Earth became Husband and Wife and God himself Divinely blessing them bid them go forth encrease and multiply And on the Seventh Day when God had ended his Work He constituted a Sabbaoth or a day of Rest exempt from Labour and other Servilities but upon the Elements were no such imposition nor were they under any breach of Command as legibly construed by this Divine Injunction Read Rabbi Moses in Sacred Writ and you 'l find it extends to Man and Beast only if when to consider the Minority of Time with the Earths inhabitants that knew no Servility but Agriculture and Grazing Wherefore to look back on the Nativity of Affairs you 'l meet Cain and Abel intrencht in this toil when as the residue of the Creation knew no Limitation but stood intirely as hitherto unconcern'd as if all days were but one day or the Almigty's great Holy-Day wherein every Creature nay all the Creation with humility rejoyced and with elevated Praises exprest their thankfulness to the great Creator It was then by Proclamation and a Royal Command from Heaven that Man and Beast only should Rest from Labour For did not the Sun continue his course and all the Stars move in their proper station Did not the Orbs the Elements and the Heavens turn round with a Rapid Motion then as now and were they not then as they now are in a perpetual and circular Rotation Did the Tides seem to stop their natural Flux or the sullen Waves lay down their brinish Heads Had the Fountains no issue did the Winds cease to hover in the ambient Air and grow remiss in transporting embodied Clouds Did the Pulse of the great World neglect to beat Sea-Monsters to roar Hurecanes to invade Earth Hail and Rain Thunder and Lightning did they associate together and proclame a Sabbaoth or a Universal Cessation None of these things we read of hapned since the Creation and what 's the reason God in his Wisdom governs the Creation but unreasonable Man was to Pilot the Creature We therefore consider that this most sacred Ordinance relates more peculiarly to Man and Beast and that the residue of the Creatures in this stupendious Creation stand intirely exempted and acquitted from it And God blessed the Seventh Day as a Day of Sanctity who through Wisdome and Providence divinely hallowed it which to consider is a manifest Proof to confirm the excellency of a Sabbaoth unto us For God by Ordination appointed six days for Labour but the Seventh he set apart for Man and Beast to Rest in The Mind and the Body therefore seem under different exercises by which I conclude ought to have different entertainments the last if we consider solicites temporals but the first if well observed she contemplates Eternals Where note the one relates to our present State but the other if I mistake not to our future Felicity wherever therefore the treasure is the desire of the Soul will also be there But Heaven contents it self with a small allowance is one day in Seven such a great exaction What a slender Service is required of us Mortals for so great kindness from so good a God how shall or dare we detract from our selves whereby to violate the Commands of Him that so sweetly by his Wisdome puts a Divine force upon us and because unwilling to do our selves good the Divinest is pleased to do good unto us It 's true at the best we are but formal Penitents that slash our own sides to raise a pity in others so wounding our selves make the Spectators cry O where 's the Vision of Piety and the Mediums of Charity when to run and embrace a veneal Polution as if so sweet and luscious were the sence of Sin that we 'l choose to die rather than live without it so sacrifice our selves to the fury of Flames fancying thereby we burn the World when as indeed we but scorch our selves in the fiery Trial of a self-will Devotion And God rested from his Work of finishing the Creation which he made and adorn'd for the good of the Creature which points out to us the Alpha and Omega the beginnings of Time and the end of the Creature For when to say the Creator rested it implies that Nature began then to Opeperate after the Divinest had put bounds and periods to every Creature and created Being To the Stars and Constellations so to Elements and Principles the Sea exceeds not her natural Course nor does her swelling Flux prevail Nor the luminous Sun tho' incircling the Heaven with a rapid Motion what does he more than illustrate vegetate and illuminate the Universe and the Stars which by Wisdome he made to shine what do they but inspire and influence the Earth And did not he also impregnate the Air with the conceal'd treasures of Rain and Hail whereby the Earth as the Air is fill'd with Life consequently the Ocean as the Earth with Vegetation What can I say more Nor indeed offer less where-ever therefore God is said to be of necessity Heaven must also be there And the Apostle tells us God is All in All and the fulness of all dwells abundantly in him to whom for ever be everlasting Praises Amen FINIS
an explanation directing to a raâ—efaction and transposition of Elements whiles we direct our intention to the Progress of multiplication by Divine grant and praeordinate Council And now the Heavens shine a blessing upon the Creation as also upon all Elementary Constitutions for God himself looked down upon the Ocean not only to bless it but all her Inhabitants Thus were they blest and all that was in them were also blest when God bid them fructifie grow up and encrease Now how can they otherwise than propagate and multiply since his Divine Word has already commanded it We therefore conclude the Creation blest and the Creatures in the Creation because being blest become a blessing to every partaker For the Bounty of the Creator can know no limit tho' the Creation it self is bounded with limitation He therefore that made it had power to confine it but being himself eternally unmade neither Art nor Power nor can any thing confine him Where 's Peters objection now to raise a scruple because when to eat what 's common or unclean since what God has cleansed is undoubtedly clean but this was a Trope or Type of Religion whereby to denote God no respecter of persons nor relates it to any thing if I Calculate right than variety and distinction of judgements and opinion For probably Peter thought none but the Iews were worthy the dignity and honour of Christianity when God thought otherwise because having chosen the Gentiles as a people approved more worthy than the Iews who not only betrayed the Lord of Life but barbarously and inhumanly they murdered their Messiah Be fruitful says the Word encrease and multiply here 's a Commission large and great enough Sealed and Signed under Heavens great Charter So that now the Rivers the Lakes and the Rivulets nay the Ocean it self is fill'd with variety And every Classis strives to exile sterility and obliterate if possible the fate of barrenness Can any Element in the Creation excepting the Ocean proclaim such multitudes as there are of Fish which surpasseth the Art of Arithmetick to number them For who has not seen that the Belly of one Female was enough of it self to accommodate a River and has not also considered that if every individual had the Ray of Life shine in it and common Providence attend it for its natural preservation to admiration so great would be the encrease that the Waters themselves would even suffocate But as there is a magnetick quality and a sympathetick harmony in the Creation so is there a natural antipathy in the Ocean as there is the like in other Elements The Falcon in the Air the Shark in the Ocean and the Angler to bait with a Fish when design'd to catch a Fish but such we call Troling so some sets Fellons to â—rapan Thieves It s usual for the great ones to prey upon the little ones as the Grampus upon the Surai the Shark upon the Boneto the Sturgeon upon the Shad the Porpus upon the Salmon the Pike upon the Dace and the Pearch upon the Minue c. This I call Antipathy but Simpathy if I mistake not is the mutual Concordance and Harmony among the Creatures I have read in Helmont of a prodigious Pike that lived as he says to an amazing bigness and not then to have died a natural death when if to consider the whole progress of Life what tribute would such a Smelter supposing this to be such bring to the Waters But lest I fall into a Piscatorian Error which vanity since my youth I can hardly withstand let me therefore commend you to my Contemplative Angler where at large you may read the Historical part of Angling For in the high Sea there 's no soundings what Art then must be used to catch Fish And so profound is this Subject that I plough but the Surface whiles others more Mathematical measure out the Circumference and dive into Natures more hidden Mysteries by a secret and pious profound Speculation the Eye of Faith and Reason introducting But we shall put ashore now to tread on Terra Firma And God said let the Earth bring forth the living Creature after his kind Cattle and creeping things and the Beast of the Earth after his kind Then the Earth brought forth in great abundance since by the Divine grant of Wisdome and Providence it had now in it self the three distinct Clases of Vegetables and Minerals besides innumerable and various forms of Insects and Animals surpassing the Art of Numeration Every Cave now was fill'd with Concressions and the Surface of the Soil was covered with Herbage The Florid Meadows also were perform'd with Odorates and the flourishing Fields were scattered with Corn. The Banks also that bounded the murmuring Streams were strewed with Arbories The Mountains with Mines the Valleys with Herds the Plains with Flocks and the Pastures with Cattle but the moist and more boggy Swamps in Vallies were crouded and covered with Amphibious Creatures besides innumerable Fowl of all sorts and kinds hovering in the Air under the Canopy of Heaven Fish also they floated in the brinish Streams whiles some others contented themselves with freshes so that every place and every thing was fill'd with plenty whereby to enrich this stupendious Creation Nor was any part of Earth as well as the Ocean exempt or denied those primary blessings from her great Benefactor that had blessed every thing who not only made her but such provision for her that to the periods of time she can know no want Who commissioned Nature also by an eternal decree as a Supream Governess not only to govern but also to labour the Elements accommodation The Lion and the Lioness roar'd then in the Desart and the Ass with the Mule bray'd in the Common but the Hart with the Hind bellowed in the Forrest and the Leopard with the Panther besides the Wolf and the Tigre were heard to howl in the barren Wilderness But the Grey or Badger he yelpt in the Earth whiles the subtle Fox in his obscure Den lay Barking conceal'd in cavities under ground The Horse he neighed in the open Field and the Cattle lay lowing in the Florid Meadows But the Sheep and the Lambs true patterns of Innocency poor Animals they lay bleating in every Pasture Chantecleer in those times he rose with the day and the early Lark took Wing with the Morning who admiring the beauty of the rising Sun mounts the fair Welkin to partake of his splendour whiles the Black-Bird and Thrush with the Winters intelligencer little Robin-red-breast mannage the Consort till almost evening and then pritty Philomel or the Summer Oracle closes up day with sweet Epithalamiums Thus the Creation in a perpetual harmony melted the Air with melodious Consorts of unterrified Quires of innocent Birds that as well as they could exprest their gratitude for the bounty and generosity of their great Benefactor who gave them a being and the blessings of accommodation the Earth to nourish and gave them