understanding each sentence according to the main purpose and intention, interpret every phrase in its. literal sense as conveying, and designed to convey, a metaphysical verity, or historical fact :—what a strange medley of doctrines should we not educe? And yet this is the way in which we are constantly in the habit of treating the books of the New Testament. Ibid. Sect. 34. And, truely, for the first chapters of Genesis I must confesse a great deal of obscurity; though divines have to the power of humane reason endeavoured to make all go in a literall meaning, yet those allegorical interpretations are also probable, and perhaps, the mysticall method of Moses bred up in the hieroglyphicall schooles of the Egyptians. The second chapter of Genesis from v. 4, and the third chapter are to my mind, as evidently symbolical, as the first chapter is literal. The first chapter is manifestly by Moses himself; but the second and third seem to me of far higher antiquity, and have the air of being translated into words from graven stones. Ibid. Sect. 48. This section is a series of ingenious paralogisms. Ibid. Sect. 49. Moses, that was bred up in all the learning of the Egyptians, committed a grosse absurdity in philosophy, when with these eyes of flesh he desired to see God, and petitioned his maker, that is, truth itself, to a contradiction. Bear in mind the Jehovah Logos, the 'ON èv KÓλT TαTρòs-the person ad extra, and few passages in the Old Testament are more instructive, or of profounder import. Overlook this, or deny it, -and none so perplexing or so irreconcilable with the known character of the inspired writer. Ibid. Sect. 50. For that mysticall metall of gold, whose solary and celestiall nature I admire, &c. For gold, Rather anti-solar and terrene nature! most of all metals, repelleth light, and resisteth that power and portion of the common air, which of all ponderable bodies is most akin to light, and its surrogate in the realm of avτipos or gravity, namely, oxygen. Gold is tellurian κατ' ἐξοχὴν: and if solar, yet as in the solidity and dark nucleus of the sun. Ibid. Sect. 52. I thank God that with joy I mention it, I was never afraid of hell, nor never grew pale at the description of that place; I have so fixed my contemplations on heaven, that I have almost forgot the idea of hell, &c. Excellent throughout. The fear of hell may, indeed, in some desperate cases, like the moxa, give the first rouse from a moral lethargy, or like the green venom of copper, by evacuating poison or a dead load from the inner man, prepare it for nobler ministrations and medicines from the realm of light and life, that nourish while they stimulate. Ibid. Sect. 54. There is no salvation to those that believe not in Christ, &c. This is plainly confined to such as have had Christ preached to them;-but the doctrine, that salvation is in and by Christ only, is a most essential verity, and an article of unspeakable grandeur and consolation. Name-nomen, that is, voúμevov, in its spiritual interpretation, is the same as power, or intrinsic cause. What? Is it a few letters of the alphabet, the hearing of which in a given succession, that saves? Ibid. Sect. 59. Before Abraham was, I am, is the saying of Christ; yet is it true in some sense if I say it of myself, for I was not only before myself, but Adam, that is, in the idea of God, and the decree of that synod held from all eternity. And in this sense, I say, the world was before the creation, and at an end before it had a beginning; and thus was I dead before I was alive;-though my grave be England, my dying-place was Paradise, and Eve miscarried of me before she conceived of Cain. Compare this with s. 11, and the judicious remark there on the mere accommodation in the præ of predestination. But the subject was too tempting for the rhetorician. Part II. Sect. 1. But as in casting account, three or four men together come short in account of one man placed by himself below them, &c. Thus 1,965. But why is the 1, said to be placed below the 965 ? Ibid. Sect. 7. Let me be nothing, if within the compass of myself, I do not finde the battaile of Lepanto, passion against reason, reason against faith, faith against the devil, and my conscience against all. It may appear whimsical, but I really feel an impatient regret, that this good man had so misconceived the nature both of faith and reason as to affirm their contrariety to each other. Ibid. For my originale sin, I hold it to bee washed away in my baptisme; for my actual transgressions, I compute and reckon with God, but from my last repentance, &c. This is most true as far as the imputation of the same is concerned. For where the means of avoiding its consequences have been afforded, each after transgression is actual, by a neglect of those means. Ibid. Sect. 14, God, being all goodnesse, can love nothing but himself; he loves us but for that part which is, as it were, himselfe, and the traduction of his Holy Spirit. This recalls a sublime thought of Spinoza. Every true virtue is a part of that love, with which God loveth himself. NOTES ON SIR THOMAS BROWNE'S GARDEN OF CYRUS, OR THE QUINCUNCIAL, ETC., PLANTATIONS OF THE Chap. iii. That bodies are first spirits, Paracelsus could affirm, &c. Effects purely relative from properties merely comparative, such as edge, point, grater, &c., are not proper qualities: for they are indifferently producible ab extra, by grinding, &c., and ab intra, from growth. In the latter instance, they suppose qualities as their antecedents. Now, therefore, since qualities cannot proceed from quantity, but quantity from quality,and as matter opposed to spirit is shape by modification of extension, or pure quantity,-Paracelsus's dictum is defensible. Ibid. The æquivocall production of things, under undiscerned principles, makes a large part of generation, &c. Written before Harvey's ab ovo omnia. Since his work, and Leuwenhoek's Microscopium, the question is settled in physics; but whether in metaphysics, is not quite so clear. Chap. iv. And mint growing in glasses of water, until it arriveth at |