BOOK gathering up of some scattered fragments of what was I. once an entire fabric, and the recovery of some precious jewels which were lost out of sight, and sunk in the shipwreck of human nature. That saying of Plato, That all knowledge is remembrance, and all ignorance forgetfulness, is a certain and undoubted truth; if by forgetfulness be meant the loss, and by remembrance the recovery, of those notions and conceptions of things, which the mind of man once had in its pure and primitive state, wherein the understanding was the truest microcosm, in which all the beings of the inferior world were faithfully represented according to their true, native, and genuine perfections. God created the soul of man not only capable of finding out the truth of things, but furnished him with a sufficient KρITρiov, or touchstone, to discover truth from falsehood, by a light set up in his understanding, which if he had attended to, he might have secured himself from all impostures and deceits. As all other beings were created in the full possession of the agreeable perfections of their several natures, so was man too; else God would have never closed the work of creation Gen. i. 31. with those words, And God saw all that he had made, and behold it was very good; that is, endued with all those perfections which were suitable to their several beings; which man had been most defective in, if his understanding had not been endowed with a large stock of intellectual knowledge, which is the most natural and genuine perfection belonging to his rational being. For reason being the most raised faculty of human nature, if that had been defective in its discoveries 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 sensitive faculties, to discern what is pleasant I. from what is hurtful, it must needs be the perfection CHAP. of the rational, to find out the difference of truth from falsehood: not as though the soul could then have had, any more than now, an actual notion of all the beings in the world coexisting at the same time, but that it would have been free from all deceit in its conceptions of things, which were not caused through inadvertency. If we Which will appear from the several aspects man's knowledge hath, which are either upwards towards his Maker, or abroad on his fellow-creatures. consider that contemplation of the soul which fixes itself on that infinite Being which was the cause of it, and is properly bewpía, it will be found necessary for the soul to be created in a clear and distinct knowledge of him, because of man's immediate obligation to obedience unto him; which must necessarily suppose the knowledge of him, whose 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 first work and duty would not have been actual obedience, but a search whether there was any supreme, infinite, and eternal Being or no; and whereon his duty to him was founded, and what might be sufficient declaration of his will and laws, according to which he must regulate his obedience. The taking off all which doubts and scruples from the soul of man, must suppose him fully satisfied, upon the first free use of reason, that there was an infinite Power and Being, which produced him, and on that account had a right to command him in whatsoever he pleased; and that those commands of his were declared to him in so certain a way, that he could not be deceived in the judging of them. The clear knowledge of God will further appear most necessary to man in his first II. I. Clemens Protrept. p. 15. ed. Oxon. BOOK creation, if we consider that God created him for this end and purpose, to enjoy converse and an humble familiarity with himself; he had then uputov πρòs tov oúpavov kovovíar, in the language of Clemens Alexandrinus, converse with God was as natural to him as his being was. For man, as he came first out of God's hands, was the reflection of God himself on a dark cloud, the iris of the Deity; the similitude was the Gen. i. 26. same, but the substance different: thence he is said to be created after the image of God. His knowledge then had been more intellectual than discursive; not so much employing his faculties in the operose deductions of reason, (the pleasant toil of the rational faculties since the fall,) but had immediately employed them about the sublimest 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 so vast a difference between the angelical and human life the angels and men both fed on the same dainties; all the difference was, they were in the VTEрov, the upper room in heaven, and man in the summer parlour in paradise. III. Plato in Cratylo. p. 269. ed. Ficin. If we take a view of man's knowledge as it respects his fellow-creatures, we shall find these were so 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 exercise of that dominion which he was instated in over the inferior world, doth imply a particular knowledge of the nature, being, and properties of those things which he was to make use of; without which he could not have improved them for their peculiar ends. And from this knowledge did proceed the giving the creatures those proper and peculiar names which were expressive of their several natures. For as Plato tells us, οὐ πάντα, I. δημιουργὸν ὀνομάτων εἶναι, ἀλλὰ μόνον ἐκεῖνον τὸν ἀποβλέποντα CHAP. εἰς τὸ τῇ φύσει ὄνομα ὂν ἑκάστῳ, the imposition of names on things belongs not to every one, but only to him that hath a full prospect into their several natures. For it is most agreeable to reason, that names should carry in them a suitableness to the things they express; for words being for no other end but to express our conceptions of things, and our conceptions being but εἰκόνες καὶ ὁμοιώματα πραγμάτων, as the same philosopher speaks, the resemblances and representations 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 express our conceptions, none are so fit to do it as those which are expressive of the several natures of the things they are used to represent; for otherwise all the use of words is to be a mere vocabulary to the understanding, 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 something further seems to be intended in their first imposition; whence the Jews call it, as Mercer tells us, a sepa- Mercerus ration and distinction of the several kinds of things: 19. and Kircher thus paraphrases the words of Moses; Kircher and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, Egypt. Oedip. that was the name thereof: i. e. saith he, fuerunt illis tom.. vera et germana nomina, et rerum naturis proprie cap. 1. accommodata. But however this be, we have this further evidence of that height of knowledge which must be supposed in the first man, that as he was the first in his kind, so 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 shekel of the sanctuary was, if not double to others, (as men ordinarily mistake,) yet of a full and exact in Gen. ii. class. 2. I. BOOK weight, because it was to be the standard for all other weights, (which was the cause of its being kept in the temple,) so if the first man had not double the proportion and measure of knowledge which his posterity hath, if it was not running over in regard of abundance, yet it must be pressed down and shaken together in regard of weight; else he would be a very unfit standard for us to judge by, concerning the due and suitable perfections of human nature. IV. But we need not have run so far back as the first man, to evince the knowledge of truth to be the most natural perfection of the soul of man; for even among the present ruins of human nature, we may find some such noble and generous spirits, that discern so much beauty in the face of truth, that to such as should inquire what they find so attractive in it, their answer would be the same with Aristotle's in a like case, it was тupλoỡ épúτηpa, the question of those who never saw it. For so pleasing is the inquiry, and so satisfactory the finding of truth after the search, that the relish of it doth far exceed the greatest epicurism of Apicius, or the most costly entertainments of Cleopatra; there being no gust so exquisite as that of the mind, nor any jewels to be compared with truth. Nor do any persons certainly better deserve the name of men, than such who allow their reason a full employment, and think not the erectness of man's stature a sufficient distinction of him from brutes. Of which those may be accounted only a higher' species, who can patiently suffer the imprisonment of their intellectuals in a dungeon of ignorance, and know themselves to be men only by those characters, by which Alexander knew himself not to be a god, by their proneness to intemperance and sleep. So strange a metempsychosis may there be without any change of bodies; and |