Conjectura cabbalistica

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History to our own times. But it will not be amiss first to inform you concerning the Creation of the world, and the original and beginning of things; How God made Heaven and Earth, and all the garnishings of them, before he made Man.

2 But the Earth at first was but a rude and desolate heap, devoid of herbs, flowers, and trees, and all living creatures, being nothing but a deep miry abyss, covered all over with waters, and there was a very fierce and strong wind that blew upon the waters; and what made it still more horrid and comfortless, there was as yet no light, but all was enveloped with thick darkness, and bore the face of a pitchy black and wet tempestuous night.

3 But God let not his work lie long in this sad condition, but commanded Light to appear, and the morning brake out upon the face of the abyss, and wheeled about from East to West, being clearest in the middle of its course about noon, and then abating of its brightness towards the West, at last quite disappeared, after such sort as you may often observe the day-light to break forth in the East, and ripen to greater clearness; but at last to leave the sky in the West, no Sun appearing all the while.

4. And God saw the Light, (for it is a thing very visible) that it was good, and so separa-

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ted the darkness from the light, that they could not both of them be upon the face of the earth together, but had their vicissitudes, and took their turns one after another.

5 And he called the return of the light Day, and the return of darkness he called Night; and the evening and the morning made up the first natural day.

6. Now after God had made this Basis foundation or floor of this greater edifice of the world, the Earth, he sets upon the higher parts of the fabric. He commands therefore that there should be a hollow expansion the atmosphere or firmament, firm and transparent, which by its strength should bear up against the waters which are above, and keep them from falling upon the earth in excess.

7. And so it became a partition betwixt the upper and the lower waters; so that by virtue of this hollow Firmament, man might live safe from the violence of such destructive inundations, as one sheltered in a well-pitched tent from storm of rain: For the danger of these waters is apparent to the eye, this ceruleous sky-blue or blue-colored Sea, that over-spreads the diaphanous transparent Firmament, being easily discerned through the body thereof; and there are very frequent and copious showers of rain descend from above, when as there is no water espied ascending up thither; wherefore it must all come from that upper Sea, if we do but appeal to our outward sense.