which proceedeth from the sun, or other lights of heaven, or from any other light, is an image, or intentional species. thereof; and an intentional species may be understood by the example of a red or green colour, occasioned by the shining of the sun through red or green glass for then we perceive the same colour cast upon any thing opposite; which redness or other colour we call the intentional species of the colour in that glass. And again; as this light, touching his simple nature, is no way yet understood; so it is disputed, whether this light first created be the same which the sun inholdeth and casteth forth, or whether it had continuance any longer than till the sun's creation. But by the most wise and unchanged order, which God observed in the works of the world, I gather, that the light, in the first day created, was the substance of the sun for d Moses repeateth twice the main parts of the universal: first, as they were created in matter; secondly, as they were adorned with form: first, naming the heavens, the earth, the waters, all confused; and afterward, the waters congregated, the earth made dry land; and the heavens distinguished from both, and beautified. And therefore the earth, as it was earth, before it was uncovered, and before it was called arida, or dry land; and the waters were waters, before they were congregated and called the sea, though neither of them perfect, or enriched with their virtual forms: so the sun, although it had not its formal perfection, his circle, beauty, and bounded magnitude till the fourth day, yet was the substance thereof in the first day (under the name of light) created; and this light formerly dispersed, was in the same fourth day united, and set in the firmament of heaven: for, to light created in the first day God gave no proper place or fixation; and therefore the effects named by anticipation (which was to separate day from night) were precisely performed, after this light was congregated and had obtained life and motion. Neither did the wisdom of God find cause why it should move (by which motion days and nights are distinguished) till then : d Gen. i. 9. because there was not yet any creature produced, to which, by moving, the sun might give light, heat, and operation. But after the earth (distinguished from waters) began to bud forth the bud of the herb, &c. God caused the sun to move, and (by interchange of time) to visit every part of the inferior world; by his heat to stir up the fire of generation, and to give activity to the seeds of all naturės: e for, as a king, which commandeth some goodly building to be erected, doth accommodate the same to that use and end to which it was ordained; so it pleased God (saith Procopius) to command the light to be; which by his allpowerful word he approved, and approving it, disposed thereof to the use and comfort of his future creatures. But in that it pleased God to ask of f Job, By what way is the light parted, and where is the way where light dwelleth? we thereby know, that the nature thereof falleth not under man's understanding; and therefore let it suffice, that by God's grace we enjoy the effects thereof. For this light is of the treasure of God, saith & Esdras, and those which inhabit the heavens do only know the essence thereof. Nihil ignotum in cœlo, nihil notum in terra: "Nothing unknown "in heaven, nothing perfectly known on earth." hRes veræ sunt in mundo invisibili; in mundo visibili umbræ rerum: "Things themselves are in the invisible world; in "the world visible, but their shadows." Surely, if this light be not spiritual, yet it approacheth nearest unto spirituality; and if it have any corporality, then of all other the most subtile and pure; for howsoever it is of all things seen the most beautiful, and of the swiftest motion, of all other the most necessary and beneficial. For it ministereth to men and other creatures all celestial influences; it dissipateth those sad thoughts and sorrows, which the darkness both begetteth and maintaineth; it discovereth unto us the glorious works of God, and carrieth up with an angelical swiftness our eyes unto heaven, that by the sight • Quemadmodum rex aliquis, &c. Procop. in Gen. i. f Job xxxviii. 24. 9. 2 Esd. vi. 40. h Herm. 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, The world discerns itself, while I the world behold, 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, 66 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." 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. 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 fowl 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 tJob, Who hath engendered the frosts of heaven? and in u 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.” 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 66 n Mont. Nat. Hist. fol. 152. • Gen. xlix. 25. P Psal. civ. 12. 4 Gen. xix. 24. Gen. xxvii. 28. s Deut. xi. 10. ▾ Gen. xi. 4. |