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 endeavored to make all go in a literall meaning, yet those
allegoricall 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.
S. 48. This section is a series of ingenious paralogisms.
S. 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 {Symbol: 'O "omega N} {Greek: en kolpo patros}—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.
S. 50.
For that mysticall metall of gold, whose solary and celestiall nature
I admire, &c.
Rather anti-solar and terrene nature! For gold, 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 {Greek: antiph'os}; or gravity, namely, oxygen. Gold is 'tellurian' {Greek: kat exochaen} and if solar, yet as in the solidity and dark 'nucleus' of the sun.