Ib.
D.
If we could have been in Paradise, and seen God take a clod of red earth, and make that wretched clod of contemptible earth such a body as should be fit to receive his breath, &c.
A sort of pun on the Hebrew word
Adam
or red earth, common in Donne's age, but unworthy of Donne, who was worthy to have seen deeper into the Scriptural sense of the 'ground,' the Hades, the multeity, the many
absque numero el infra numerum
, that which is below, as God is that which transcends, intellect.
Ib.
p. 179. B.