first and easy commandment, the lives of men on earth might have continued double, treble, or quadruple to any of the longest times of the first age, as many learned men have conceived. Chrysostom, Rupertus, Tostatus, and others were of belief, that (but for Adam's fall and transgression) Adam and his posterity had been immortal. But such is the infinite wisdom of God, as he foresaw that the earth could not have contained mankind; or else, that millions of souls must have been ungenerated, and have had no being, if the first number, wherewith the earth was replenished, had abode thereon for ever: and therefore that of Chrysostom must be understood of immortality of bodies, which should have been translated and glorified.

But of what kind or species this tree of life was, no man hath taken on him to teach: in which respect many have conceived, that the same was not material, but a mere allegory, taking their strength out of Solomon, where wisdom is compared to the tree of life; and from other places, where also Christ is called the tree of life, and out of the Apocalypsis, I will give to him that overcometh to eat of the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God. But to this place St. Augustine's answer may suffice, which is, That the one doth not exclude the other, but that, as there was a terrestrial paradise, so there was a celestial. For although Agar and Sara were figures of the Old and New Testament, yet to think that they were not women, and the maid and wife of Abraham, were mere foolishness. And so in this place the sense of the scripture is manifest. For God brought out of the earth every tree fair to sight, and sweet to taste; the tree also of life in the midst of the garden: which sheweth, that among the trees which the earth by God's commandment produced, the tree of life was one, and that the fruit thereof was also to be eaten. The report of this tree was also brought to the ancient poets: for as from the indigested matter or chaos, Hesiodus, Homer, Ovid, and others, steal the invention of the created world; so

* Apocal. ii. 7.

from the garden of paradise, they took the platform of the orchard of Alcinous, and another of the Hesperides; and from the tree of life their nectar and ambrosia; for nectar, according to Suidas, signifieth making young, and ambrosia, immortality; and therefore said to be the meat and drink of the gods.

SECT. II.

Of Becanus's opinion, that the tree of knowledge was ficus Indica. NOW for the tree of knowledge of good and evil, some men have presumed further, especially Goropius Becanus, who giveth himself the honour to have found out the kind of this tree, which none of the writers of former times could ever guess at, whereat Goropius much marvelleth. But as he had an inventive brain, so there never lived any man that believed better thereof, and of himself. Surely howsoever his opinion may be valued, yet he usurpeth the praise due to others, at least if the invention be at that price at which he setteth it. For Moses Bar-Cephas fastened on this conjecture above six hundred years before Becanus was born: and Bar-Cephas himself referreth the invention to an antiquity more remote, citing for his author Philoxenus Maburgensis, and others, whose very words Goropius useth, both concerning the tree and the reasons wherewith he would induce other men to that belief. For Moses Bar-Cephas, in his Treatise of Paradise, (the first part, and fol. 48.) saith, that the tree of knowledge was ficus Indica, the Indian fig-tree, of which the greatest plenty, saith Becanus, are found upon the banks of Acesines, one of the rivers which falleth into Indus, where Alexander built his fleet of galleys in, or near the kingdom of Porus.

This tree beareth a fruit of the bigness of a great pea, or, as Pliny reporteth, somewhat bigger, and that it is a tree se semper serens, " always planting itself;" that it spreadeth itself so far abroad, as that a troop of horsemen may hide themselves under it. Strabo saith, that it hath

branches bending downwards, and leaves no less than a shield. Aristobulus affirmeth, that fifty horsemen may shadow themselves under one of these trees. Onesicritus raiseth this number to four hundred. This tree, saith Theophrastus, exceedeth all other in bigness, which also Pliny and Onesicritus confirm; to the trunk of which these authors give such a magnitude as I shame to repeat. But it may be, they all speak by an ill-understood report. For this Indian fig-tree is not so rare a plant as Becanus conceiveth, who, because he found it no where else, would needs draw the garden of paradise to the tree, and set it by the river Acesines. But many parts of the world have them, and I myself have seen twenty thousand of them in one valley, not far from Paria in America. They grow in moist grounds, and in this manner. After they are first shot up some twenty or thirty foot in length, (some more, some less, according to the soil,) they spread a very large top, having no bough nor twig in the trunk or stem: for from the utmost end of the head-branches there issueth out a gummy juice, which hangeth downward like a cord or sinew, and within a few months reacheth the ground, which it no sooner toucheth but it taketh root; and then, being filled both from the top boughs and from his own proper root, this cord maketh itself a tree exceeding hastily. From the utmost boughs of these young trees there fall again the like cords, which in one year and less (in that world of a perpetual spring) become also trees of the bigness of the nether part of a lance, and as straight as art or nature can make any thing, casting such a shade, and making such a kind of grove, as no other tree in the world can do. Now one of these trees considered, with all his young ones, may indeed shroud four hundred or four thousand horsemen, if they please; for they cover whole valleys of ground where these trees grow near the seabank, as they do by thousands in the inner part of Trinidado. The cords which fall down over the banks into the sea, shooting always downward to find root under water, are in those seas of the Indies, where oysters breed, entangled in their beds,

so as by pulling up one of these cords out of the sea, I have seen five hundred oysters hanging in a heap thereon; whereof the report came, that oysters grew on trees in India. But that they bear any such huge leaves, or any such delicate fruit, I could never find, and yet I have travelled a dozen miles together under them. But to return to Goropius Becanus. This tree, saith he, was good for meat and pleasing to the sight, as the tree of knowledge of good and evil is described to be.

Secondly, this tree having so huge a trunk, (as the former authors report, and Becanus believeth,) it was in this tree that Adam and Eve hid themselves from the presence of God; for no other tree, saith he, could contain them. But first it is certain, that this tree hath no extraordinary magnitude, as touching the trunk or stem; for among ten thousand of them it is hard to find any one bigger than the rest; and these are all of a mean size. Secondly, the words of Moses, translated in medio ligni, are by all the interpreters understood in the plural number, that is, "in the "midst of the trees." But his third argument (or rather the argument of Moses Bar-Cephas, word for word) is, that when Adam and Eve found themselves naked, they made them breeches of fig-leaves; which proveth, indeed, that either the tree itself was a fig-tree, or that a fig-tree grew near it because Adam being possessed with shame, did not run up and down the garden to seek out leaves to cover him, but found them in the place itself; and these leaves of all others were most commodious, by reason of their largeness, which Pliny avoweth in these words; 'Latitudo foliorum peltæ effigiem Amazoniæ habet: " The breadth of "the leaves hath the shape of an Amazonian shield:" which also Theophrast confirmeth: the form of which target Virgil touches;

m Ducit Amazonidum lunatis agmina peltis
Penthesilea furens.

* Gen. iii. 7.

1 Pl. 1. 12. c. 5.

m

Virg. Æn. I. 490.

The Amazon with crescent-formed shield
Penthesilea leads into the field.

Here Becanus desireth to be believed, or rather threateneth us all that read him, to give credit to this his borrowed discovery, using this confident (or rather choleric) speech. Quis erit tam impudenter obstinatus, si hæc a nobis de ficu hac ex antiquis scriptoribus cum Mosis narratione comparet, ut audeat dicere aliam arborem inveniri posse, quæ cum illa magis quadret; "Who will be so impudently obsti"nate, if he compare these things, which we have reported "of this fig-tree, and out of ancient writers delivered, with the "narration of Moses, as to dare to avow that any other tree "can be found, which doth more properly answer or agree "therewith." But for myself, because I neither find this tree sorting in body, in largeness of leaves, nor in fruit to this report, I rather incline to the opinion of Philo; that the earth never brought forth any of these trees neither before nor after: but I leave every man to his own belief, for the matter is of no great weight as touching his kind; only thereby, and by the easy commandment by God given to Adam, to forbear to feed thereon, it pleased God to make trial of his obedience: n Prohibita, non propter aliud, quam ad commendandum puræ ac simplicis obedientiæ bonum; "Being forbidden, not for any other respect, than thereby to commend the goodness of pure and simple obedience.”

SECT. III.

Of Becanus's not unwitty allegorizing of the story of his ficus Indica.

BUT in this I must do Becanus right, that he hath very wittily allegorized this tree, allowing his supposition of the tree itself to be true. The effects whereof, because his discourses are exceeding ample, I have gathered in these few words. As this tree, saith he, so did man grow straight and