thereof, our minds, being informed of his visible marvels, may continually travel to surmount these perceived heavens, and to find out their omnipotent cause and Creator. Cognitio non quiescit in rebus creatis; "Our knowledge doth "not quiet itself in things created." Et ipsa lux facit, ut cætera mundi membra digna sint laudibus, cum suam bonitatem et decorem omnibus communicet; "It is the light,” saith St. Ambrose," that maketh the other parts of the "world so worthy of praise, seeing that itself communicat"eth its goodness and beauty unto all." Of which Ovid out of Orpheus:

k Ille ego sum, qui longum metior annum,

Omnia qui video, per quem videt omnia mundus,
Mundi oculus.

The world discerns itself, while I the world behold,
By me the longest years, and other times are told,
I the world's eye.

Lastly, if we may behold in any creature any one spark of that eternal fire, or any far-off dawning of God's glorious brightness, the same in the beauty, motion, and virtue of this light may be perceived. Therefore was God called Lux ipsa, and the light by Hermes named lux sancta, and Christ our Saviour said to be that Light, which lighteneth every man that cometh into the world. Yet in respect of God's incomprehensible sublimity and purity, this is also true, that God is neither a mind nor a spirit of the nature of other spirits; nor a light, such as can be discerned. Deus profecto non mens est, at vero ut sit mens causa est; nec spiritus, sed causa qua spiritus extat; nec lumen, sed causa qua lumen existit. "God," saith Hermes in Pomandro, "certainly is not a mind, but the cause that the mind hath "his being; nor spirit, but the cause by which every spirit is; nor light, but the cause by which the light ex"isteth."

66

So then the mass and chaos being first created, void,

dark, and informed, was by the operative Spirit of God pierced and quickened, and the waters having now received spirit and motion, resolved their thinner parts into air, which God illightened: the earth also by being contiguat, and mixed with waters, (participating the same divine virtue,) mbrought forth the bud of the herb that seedeth seed, &c. and for a mean and organ, by which this operative virtue might be continued, God appointed the light to be united, and gave it also motion and heat; which heat caused a continuance of those several species which the earth (being made fruitful by the Spirit) produced, and with motion begat the time and times succeeding.

SECT. VIII.

Of the firmament, and of the waters above the firmament: and whether there be any crystalline heaven, or any primum mobile.

AFTER that the Spirit of God had moved upon the waters, and light was created, God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters: that is, those waters which by rarefaction and evaporation were ascended, and those of the earth and sea.

But these waters, separate above this extension, which the Latin translation calleth firmamentum, or expansum, (for so Vatablus, Pagninus, and Junius turn it,) are not the crystalline heavens created in the imaginations of men; which opinion Basilius Magnus calleth a childish supposition, making in the same place many learned arguments against this fancy. For the waters above the firmament. are the waters in the air above us, where the same is more solid and condense, which God separated from the nether waters by a firmament, that is, by an extended distance and vast space: the words raquia (which Montanus writeth rakiagh) and shamajim being indifferently taken for the heaven and for air, and more properly for the air and ether

m Gen. i. 11.

than for the heavens, as the best Hebricians understand them, "quo suprema ac tenuia ab infimis crassis diducta, intersectaque distarent, "for that whereby the supreme " and thin bodies were placed in distance, being severed " and cut off from low and gross matters:" and the waters above the firmament, expressed in the word majim, are in that tongue taken properly for the waters above the air, or in the uppermost region of the same.

S

r

And that the word heaven is used for the air, the scriptures every where witness; as in the blessings of Joseph; and in the 104th Psalm, P By these springs shall the forol of the heaven dwell: and, upon Sodom and Gomorrah it rained brimstone and fire out of the heaven: and in Isaac's blessing to Jacob, God give thee therefore of the dew of heaven: and in Deuteronomy the 11th, But the land, whither you go to possess it, is a land that drinketh water of the rain of heaven and in Job, Who hath engendered the frosts of heaven? and in St. Matthew, Behold the fowls of heaven: for they sow not. So as in all the scriptures of the Old Testament throughout is the word heaven very often used for air, and taken also hyperbolically for any great height, as, Let us build us a tower, whose top may reach to heaven, &c. And in this very place Basil avoucheth, that this appellation of heaven for the firmament is but by way of similitude: his own words be these; Et vocavit Deus firmamentum cœlum. Hæc appellatio alii quidem proprie accommodatur, huic autem nunc ad similitudinem; And God called the firmament heaven. "This appellation," saith Basil," is properly applied to another," (that is, to the starry heaven,) “but to this” (that is, to the firmament dividing the waters) "it is imposed by similitude." And if there were no other proof, that by the firmament was meant the air, and not the heaven; the words of Moses in the 8th verse, conferred with the same word firmament in the

n Mont. Nat. Hist. fol. 152.

• Gen. xlix. 25.

P Psal. civ. 12.

4 Gen. xix. 24. Gen. xxvii. 28.

s Deut. xi. IO.

t Job xxxviii. 29.

u Matt. vi. 26.

▾ Gen. xi. 4.

:

20th verse, make it manifest: for in the 8th verse it is written, that God called the firmament, which divided waters from waters, heaven; and in the 20th verse he calleth the firmament of heaven, air; in these words, And let the fowl fly upon the earth in the open firmament of heaven. And what use there should be of this icy, or crystalline, or watery heaven, I conceive not, except it be to moderate and temper the heat, which the primum mobile would otherwise gather and increase though in very truth, instead of this help, it would add an unmeasurable greatness of circle, whereby the swiftness of that first moveable would exceed all possibility of belief. Sed nemo tenetur ad impossibilia; "But "no man ought to be held to impossibilities:" and faith itself (which surmounteth the height of all human reason) hath for a forcible conductor the word of truth, which also may be called lumen omnis rationis et intellectus; "the light of all reason and understanding." Now that this supposed first moveable turneth itself so many hundred thousand miles in an instant, (seeing the scriptures teach it not,) let those that can believe men's imaginations apprehend it, for I cannot. But of these many heavens, let the reader that desireth satisfaction search Orontius; and of this watery heaven, Basilius Magnus, in his Hexam. fol. 40, 41, &c. and Matth. Beroaldus, in his 2d book and 6th chapter. For myself, I am persuaded, that the waters called, the waters above the heavens, are but the clouds and waters engendered in the uppermost air.

SECT. IX.

A conclusion, repeating the sum of the works in the creation, which are reduced to three heads: the creation of matter, the forming of it, the finishing of it.

TO conclude; it may be gathered out of the first chapter of Genesis, that this was the order of the most wise God in the beginning, and when there was no other nature, or being, but God's incomprehensible eternity. First, he created the matter of all things: and in the first three days he distinguished, and gave to every nature his pro

per form; the form of levity to that which ascended; to that which descended, the form of gravity: for he separated light from darkness, divided waters from waters, and gathered the waters under the firmament into one place. In the last three days, God adorned, beautified, and replenished the world: he set in the firmament of heaven the sun, moon, and stars; filled the earth with beasts, the air with fowl, and the sea with fish, giving to all that have life a power generative, thereby to continue their species and kinds; to creatures vegetative and growing, their seeds in themselves; for he created all things, that they might have their being: and the generations of the world are preserved.

SECT. X.

That nature is no principium per se; nor form, the giver of being : and of our ignorance how second causes should have any proportion with their effects.

AND for this working power, which we call nature, the beginning of motion and rest, according to Aristotle; the same is nothing else but the strength and faculty which God hath infused into every creature, having no other selfability than a clock, after it is wound up by a man's hand, hath. Those therefore that attribute unto this faculty any first or sole power, have therein no other understanding than such a one hath, who, looking into the stern of a ship, and finding it guided by the helm and rudder, doth ascribe some absolute virtue to the piece of wood, without all consideration of the hand that guides it, or of the judgment which also directeth and commandeth that hand: forgetting in this and in all else, that by the virtue of the first act all agents work whatsoever they work: Virtute primi actus, agunt agentia omnia quicquid agunt: for as the mind of man seeth by the organ of the eye, heareth by the ears, and maketh choice by the will; and therefore we attribute sight to the eye, and hearing to the ears, &c. and yet

* Wisd. Sal. i. 14.