ledge and illumination are placed before the angels of office and domination.d To descend from spiritual and intellectual, to sensible and material forms; we read the first created form was light,e which, in nature and corporeal things, hath a relation and correspondence to knowledge in spirits, and things incorporeal; so, in the distribution of days, we find the day wherein God rested and completed his works, was blessed above all the days wherein he wrought them.f After the creation was finished, it is said that man was placed in the garden to work therein, which work could only be work of contemplation; that is, the end of his work was but for exercise and delight, and not for necessity for there being then no reluctance of the creature, nor sweat of the brow, man's employment was consequently matter of pleasure, not labour. Again, the first acts which man performed in Paradise consisted of the two summary parts of knowledge, a view of the creature, and imposition of names.g In the first event after the fall, we find an image of the two states, the contemplative and the active, figured out in the persons of Abel and Cain, by the two simplest and most primitive trades, that of the shepherd and that of the husbandman ; where again, the favour of God went to the shepherd, and not to the tiller of the ground. So in the age before the flood, the sacred records mention the name of the inventors of music and workers in metal.i In the age after the flood, the first great judgment of God upon the ambition of man was the confusion of tongues,k whereby the open trade and intercourse of learning and knowledge was chiefly obstructed. It is said of Moses, "That he was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians," which nation was one of the most ancient schools of the world; for Plato brings in the Egyptian priest saying to Solon, "You Grecians are ever children, having no knowledge of antiquity, nor antiquity of knowledge." m In the ceremonial laws of Moses we find, that besides the prefiguration of Christ, the mark of the people of God to distinguish them from the Gentiles, the exercise of obedience, and other divine institutions, the most learned of the rabbis have observed a natural and some of them a moral sense in many of the rites and ceremonies. Thus in the law of the leprosy, where it is said, "If the whiteness have overspread the flesh, the patient may pass abroad for clean; but if there be any whole flesh remaining, he is to be shut up for unclean," "-one of them notes a principle of nature, viz., that putrefaction is more contagious before maturity than after. Another hereupon observes a position of moral philosophy, that men abandoned to vice do not corrupt the manners of others, so much as those who are but half wicked. And in many other places of the Jewish law, besides the theological sense, there are couched many philo sophical matters. The book of Job° likewise will be found, if examined with care, pregnant with the secrets of natural philosophy. For example, when it says, "Qui extendit Aquilonem super vacuum, et appendit terram super nihilum,” the suspension of the earth and the convexity of the heavens are manifestly alluded to. Again, "Spiritus ejus ornavit cælos, et obstetricante manu ejus eductus est coluber tortuosus;" and in another place, "Numquid conjungere valebis micantes stellas Pleiadas, aut gyrum Arcturi poteris dissipare?" where the immutabler configuration of the fixed stars, ever preserving the same position, is with elegance described. So in another place: Qui facit Arcturum, et Oriona, et Hyadas, et interiora Austri," where he again refers to the depression of the south pole in the expression of “interiora Austri," because the southern stars are not seen in n Leviticus xiii. 12. P Job xxvi. 7, 13. 66 • See Job xxvi.-xxxviii. That is, to Job, who cannot be supposed to know what telescopes only have revealed, that stars change their declination with unequal degrees of motion. It is clear, therefore, that their distances must be variable, and that in the end the figures of the constellations wil' undergo mutation; as this change, however, will not be perceptible for thousands of years, it hardly comes within the limit of man's idea of mutation, and therefore, with regard to him, may be said to have no existence. Ed. The Hyades nearly approach the letter V in appearance. The crown of stars which forms a kind of imperfect circle near Arcturus. our hemisphere." Again, what concerns the generation of living creatures, he says, "Annon sicut lac mulsisti me, et sicut caseum coagulasti me?"x and touching mineral subjects, "Habet argentum venarum suarum principia, et auro locus est, in quo conflatur; ferrum de terra tollitur, et lapis solutus calore in æs vertitur," and so forward in the same chapter. Nor did the dispensation of God vary in the times after ow Saviour, who himself first showed his power to subdue igorance, by conferring with the priests and doctors of the law, before he showed his power to subdue nature by miracles. And the coming of the Holy Spirit was chiefly expressed in the gift of tongues, which are but the conveyance of knowledge. So in the election of those instruments it pleased God to use for planting the faith, though at first he employed persons altogether unlearned, otherwise than by inspiration, the more evidently to declare his immediate working, and to humble all human wisdom or knowledge, yet in the next succession he sent out his divine truth into the world, attended with other parts of learning as with servants or handmaids; thus St. Paul, who was the only learned amongst the apostles, had his pen most employed in the writings of the New Testament. Again, we find that many of the ancient bishops and fathers of the Church were well versed in all the learning of the heathens, insomuch that the edict of the Emperor Julian prohibiting Christians the schools and exercises, was accounted a more pernicious engine against the faith than all the sanguinary persecutions of his predecessors. Neither could Gregory the First, bishop of Rome, ever obtain the opinion of devotion even among the pious, for designing, though otherwise an excellent person, to extinguish the memory of heathen antiquity. But it was the Christian u It is not true that all the southern stars are invisible in our hemisphere. The text applies only to those whose southern declination is greater than the elevation of the equator over their part of the horizon, or, which is the same thing, than the complement of the place's lati tude. Ed. y xxviii. 1. 1 x. 10. Epist. ad Jamblic. Gibbon, vol. ii. c. 28. • Gibbon, vol. iv. c. 45. Church which, amidst the inundations of the Scythians from the north-west and the Saracens from the east, preserved in her hosom the relics even of heathen learning, which had otherwise been utterly extinguished. And of late years the Jesuits, partly of themselves and partly provoked by example, have greatly enlivened and strengthened the state of learning, and contributed to establish the Roman see. There are, therefore, two principal services, besides ornament and illustration, which philosophy and human learning perform to faith and religion, the one effectually exciting to the exaltation of God's glory, and the other affording a singular preservative against unbelief and error. Our Saviour says, "Ye err, not knowing the Scriptures, nor the power of God;"b thus laying before us two books to study, if we will be secured from error; viz., the Scriptures, which reveal the will of God, and the creation, which expresses his power; the latter whereof is a key to the former, and not only opens our understanding to conceive the true sense of the Scripture by the general notions of reason and the rules of speech, but chiefly opens our faith in drawing us to a due consideration of the omnipotence of God, which is stamped upon his works. And thus much for Divine testimony concerning the dignity and merits of learning. Next for human proofs. Deification was the highest honour among the heathens; that is, to obtain veneration as a god was the supreme respect which man could pay to man, especially when given, not by a formal act of state as it usually was to the Roman emperors, but from a voluntary, internal assent and acknowledgment. This honour being 30 high, there was also constituted a middle kind, for human honours were inferior to honours heroical and divine. Aniquity observed this difference in their distribution, that whereas founders of states, lawgivers, extirpers of tyrants, Sathers of the people, and other eminent persons in civil merit, were honoured but with the titles of heroes, or demigods, such as Hercules, Theseus, Minos, Romulus, &c. Inventors, and authors of new arts or discoveries for the service of human life, were ever advanced amongst the gods, as in the case of Ceres, Bacchus, Mercury, Apollo, and others. And this Matt. xxii. 29. appears to have been done with great justice and judgment, for the merits of the former being generally confined within the circle of one age or nation, are but like fruitful showers, which serve only for a season and a small extent, whilst the others are like the benefits of the sun, permanent and universal. Again, the former are mixed with strife and contention, whilst the latter have the true character of the Divine presence, as coming in a gentle gale without noise or tumult. The merit of learning in remedying the inconveniences arising from man to man, is not much inferior to that of relieving human necessities. This merit was livelily described by the ancients in the fiction of Orpheus's theatre, where all the beasts and birds assembled, and forgetting their several appetites, stood sociably together listening to the harp, whose sound no sooner ceased, or was drowned by a louder, but they all returned to their respective natures; for thus men are full of savage and unreclaimed desires, which as long as we hearken to precepts, laws, and religion, sweetly touched with eloquence and persuasion, so long is society and peace maintained; but if these instruments become silent, or seditions and tumult drown their music, all things fall back to confusion and anarchy. C This appears more manifestly when princes or governors are learned; for though he might be thought partial to his profession who said, "States would then be happy, when either kings were philosophers, or philosophers kings;" yet so much is verified by experience, that the best times have happened under wise and learned princes; for though kings may have their errors and vices, like other men, yet if they are illuminated by learning, they constantly retain such notions of religion, policy, and morality, as may preserve them from destructive and irremediable errors or excesses; for these notions will whisper to them, even whilst counsellors and servants stand mute. Such senators likewise as are learned proceed upon more safe and substantial principles than mere men of experience, the former view dangers afar off, whilst the latter discover them not till they are at hand, and then trust to their wit to avoid them. This felicity of • Plato (De Republica, b. 5) ii. 475. |