ORIGINES SACRÆ. BOOK. I. CHAP. I. The Obfcurity and Defect of Ancient History. I. II. III. IV. The Knowledge of Truth proved to be the moft natural Perfection of the rational Soul; V. Yet Error often mistaken for Truth: the Accounts of it. VI. Want of Diligence in its Search; VII. VIII. The Mixture of Truth and Falsehood: thence comes either rejecting Truth for the Error's Sake, or embracing the Error for the Truth's Sake; IX. The firft inftanced in Heathen Philofophers, XIII. The fecond in vulgar Heathen. X. XI. XII. Of Philofophical Atheifin, and the Grounds of it. XIV. The Hiftory of Antiquity very obfcure. XV. The Question ftated, where the true Hiftory of ancient Times is to be found? in Heathen Hiftories, or only in Scripture? XVI. The Want of Credibility in Heathen Hiftories afferted and proved by the general Defect for Want of timely Records among Heathen Nations; the Reafon of it fhewed from the firft Plantations of the World. XVII. The Manner of them discovered. The Original of Civil Government. XVIII. Of Hieroglyphics. XIX. VOL. I. B.. BOOK I. I. XIX. The Ufe of Letters among the Greeks no older than Cadmus; XX. His Time enquired into: no older than Joshua: XXI. The Learning brought into Greece by him. commendation above all other designs, that they come on purpose to gratify the most noble faculty of our fouls, and do moft immediately tend to advance the highest perfection of our rational beings. For all our moft laudable endeavours after knowledge now, are only the gathering up of fome scattered fragments of what was once an entire fabric, and the recovery of fome precious jewels which were loft out of fight, and funk in the shipwreck of human nature. That faying of Plato, That all knowledge is remembrance, and all ignorance forgetfulness, is a certain and undoubted truth; if by forgetfulness be meant the lofs, and by remembrance the recovery, of those notions and conceptions of things, which the mind of man once had in its pure and primitive ftate, wherein the understanding was the trueft microcofm, in which all the beings of the inferior world were faithfully represented according to their true, native, and genuine perfections. God created the foul of man not only capable of finding out the truth of things, but furnished him with a fufficient pirngiov, or touchftore, to discover truth from falfehood, by a light fet up in his understanding, which if he had attended to, he might have fecured hinifelf from all impoftures and deceits. As all other beings were created in the full poffeffion of the agreeable perfections of their feveral natures, fo was man too; elfe God would have never clofed the work of creation with those Gen. i. 31. words, And God faw all that he had made, and behold it was very good; that is, endued with all those perfections which were fuitable to their feveral beings; which man had been moft defective in, if his understanding had not been endowed with a large stock of intellectual I. intellectual knowledge, which is the most natural CHA P. and genuine perfection belonging to his rational being. For reafon being the moft raised faculty of human nature, if that had been defective in its difcoveries of truth, which is its proper object, it would have argued the greatest maim and imperfection in the being itself. For if it belongs to the perfection of the fenfitive faculties, to difcern what is pleasant from what is hurtful, it must needs be the perfection of the rational, to find out the difference of truth from falfehood: not as though the foul could then have had, any more than now, an actual notion of all the beings in the world co-existing at the fame time, but that it would have been free from all deceit in its conceptions of things, which were not caufed through inadvertency. If we Which will appear from the feveral aspects man's knowledge hath, which are either upwards towards his Maker, or abroad on his fellow-creatures. confider that contemplation of the foul which fixes itself on that infinite Being which was the cause of it, and is properly swgía, it will be found neceffary for the foul to be created in a clear and diftinét knowledge of him, because of man's immediate obligation to obedience unto him; which muft neceffarily fuppofe the knowledge of him, whofe will must be his rule for if man were not fully convinced, in the first moment after his creation, of the being of him whom he was to obey, his firft work and duty would not have been actual obedience, but a fearch whether there was any fupreme, infinite, and eternal Being or no; and whereon his duty to him was founded, and what might be fufficient declaration of his will and laws, according to which he must regulate his obedience. The taking off all which doubts and fcruples from the foul of man, must suppose him fully fatisfied, upon the first free ufe of reafon, that there was an infinite Power and Being, which produced him, and on that account had a right to com mand B 2 II. I. Clemens Dr. Ed. BOOK mand him in whatsoever he pleased; and that those commands of his were declared to him in fo certain a way, that he could not be deceived in the judging of them. The clear knowledge of God will further appear moft neceffary to man in his firft creation, if we confider that God created him for this end and purpofe, to enjoy converfe and an humble familiarity with himfelf; he had then ἔμφυτον πρὸς τὸν οὐρανὸν noueríav, in the language of Clemens Alexandrinus, converfe with God was as natural to him as his being was. For man, as he came firft out of God's hands, was the reflection of God himself on a dark cloud, the iris of the Deity; the fimilitude was the fame, but the fubftance different: thence he is faid to be Gen. i. 26. created after the image of God. His knowledge then had been more intellectual than difcurfive; not fo much employing his faculties in the operofe deductions of reafon (the pleasant toil of the rational faculties fince the fall), but had immediately employed them about the fublimeft objects; not about quiddities and formalities, but about him who was the fountain of his being, and the centre of his happiness. There was not then fo vaft a difference between the angelical and human life: the angels and men both fed on the fame dainties; all the difference was, they were in the Tegov, the upper room in heaven, and man in the fummer parlour in paradife. III. If we take a view of man's knowledge as it refpects his fellow-creatures, we fhall find thefe were fo fully known to him on his first creation, that he needed not to go to school to the wide world, to gather up his conceptions of them. For the right exercife of that dominion which he was inftated in over the inferior world, doth imply a particular knowledge of the nature, being, and properties of those things which he was to make ufe of; without which he could not have improved them for their peculiar ends. And from this knowledge did proceed the giving the creatures thofe proper and peculiar names which were expreffive expreffive of their feveral natures. I. Cratylo. P. 269. For as Plato tells CHA P. us, οὐ πάντα δημιεργρὸν ὀνομάτων εἶναι, ἀλλὰ μόνον ἐκεῖνον τὸν ἀποβλέποντα εἰς τὸ τῇ φύσει ὄνομα ἓν ἑκάσῳ, the impofition Plato in of names on things belongs not to every one, but only to him that hath a full profpect into their several natures. Ed. Ficin. For it is most agreeable to reason, that names fhould carry in them a fuitableness to the things they exprefs; for words being for no other end but to exprefs our conceptions of things, and our conceptions being but εἰκόνες καὶ ὁμοιώματα πραγμάτων, as the fame philofopher speaks, the refemblances and reprefentations of the things, it must needs follow, that, where there was a true knowledge, the conceptions must agree with the things; and words being to exprefs our conceptions, none are fo fit to do it as thofe which are expreffive of the feveral natures of the things they are used to reprefent; for otherwise all the ufe of words is to be a mere vocabulary to the underftanding, and an index to memory, and of no further use in the pursuit of knowledge, than to let us know what words men are agreed to call things by. But fomething further feems to be intended in their firft impofition; whence the Jews call it n para Gen. 11. 19. Oedip. Egypt. tom. ii. claff. 2. cap. I. Mercerus in as Mercer tells us, a feparation and diftinction of the feveral kinds of things and Kircher thus Kircher phrafes the words of Mofes; and whatfoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof: i. e. faith he, fuerunt illis vera & germana nomina, & rerum naturis propriè accommodata. But however this be, we have this further evidence of that height of knowledge which must be fuppofed in the first man, that as he was the firft in his kind, fo he was to be the standard and measure of all that followed, and therefore could not want any thing of the due perfections of human nature. And as the fhekel of the fanctuary was, if not double to others (as men ordinarily mistake), yet of a full and exact weight, because it was to be the standard for all other weights (which was the caufe of its being kept in the temple), |