and natural. What more should I say? He was an utter stranger in this world, unable to distinguish medicines from poisons, or prepare ordinary food and drink. No provisions lay ready to hand except the earth’s raw and unseasoned plants: he must either starve or feed with the beasts of the field, as Nebuchadnezzar did. He had indeed sometimes heard of a tree of life in Eden; but, for all he knew, this world’s plants might be so many trees of death. I therefore conclude that he had an instructor to initiate him into the ways of life and show him that wilderness’s intricate, narrow paths. Undoubtedly his outward miseries and inward despair were reasons for God to reveal to him an art through which he might relieve his present needs and embrace a firm hope of future, glorious restoration. For God, having ordained a second, eternal Adam, manifested the possibility of his coming to the first through a mysterious experience. Now full of despair and burdened by guilt for his sin, the first Adam was a fit patient for so divine and merciful a physician. But, passing over our own arguments for this purpose, let us turn to the Kabbalists, who

speak very loftily on this point, and express themselves as follows. God, they say, having shut his paradise’s doors and expelled Adam, once the dearest of his creatures, nevertheless retained his former affection despite the present punishment. God is said to love his creatures because he desires their perfection, rather than because anything in them is lovable apart from their Creator. That is, he wishes them to conform to himself and be fit to receive his image or likeness, a spiritual impression of his beauty. To restore this likeness in Adam was impossible unless God took back to himself what had now fallen away from him. God had stored up such transcendent and almost incredible mercy in his secret will: he resolved to unite human nature with his own and thus rescue man from death by taking him into the Godhead, the true fountain and centre of life. This will, the Kabbalists say, was first revealed to the angels by God himself in these words: [Original marginal citation: Genesis, chapter 3, verse 22.] [New translation of the Latin:] “Behold Adam, as one of us”; [Vaughan’s own English rendering:] “Behold an Adam like one of us, knowing good and evil!” They call this speech [New translation of the Latin:] “a most secret discourse held by the Creator of the world with the blessed angels in the innermost sanctuary of his divinity”; [Vaughan’s own English rendering:] “A most secret conference

which God held with the blessed angels in heaven’s inner chambers.” That the same Scripture should say one thing in its letter and another in its mystery is no strangeness to me, however difficult someone else may find it. Truly this text may not concern the first Adam, whose knowledge of evil through committing it could not make him like God: that knowledge made him sinful and wholly unlike him. God, if I may put it so, knows evil only speculatively, since nothing can escape his knowledge; he is therefore not guilty of evil. As Trithemius rightly observed, [New translation of the Latin:] “Knowledge of evil is not evil, but its use is”; [Vaughan’s own English rendering:] “The knowledge of evil is not evil, but the practice of it.” It follows that this speech concerned the second Adam, Christ Jesus, who knew evil without committing it. He was therefore “like one of us”—like one of the Trinity—knowing good and evil, yet in no way guilty of evil. No sooner was this original, concise Gospel imparted to the angels than they became its ministers. As Saint Paul says, the law was ordained in their hands until Christ should take it into his own; and their ministry to man began with this oracle. Thus, the Kabbalists say, the angel Raziel was immediately

sent to communicate this knowledge to Adam and acquaint him with the mysteries of both worlds, eternal and temporal. As Adam could not obtain the eternal world’s blessings unless he apprehended its three eternal principles through true faith, so he could not fully enjoy the temporal world’s benefits unless he truly understood its three visible substances. For there are three above and three below: three in heaven, as Saint John says, and three on earth. The lower bear witness to the higher and are their only proper receptacles. They are signatures and created books in which we may read the mysteries of the supernatural Trinity. But to continue our earlier discourse: the Kabbalists assign a guardian not only to Adam but to every patriarch, granting each presiding spirits and tutors to assist and instruct them in their weary worldly wanderings. In my opinion this doctrine is as necessary as it is religious, however monstrous it may seem to fanciful, insipid theologians. We certainly cannot discover mysteries by ourselves. We must have either God’s Spirit or the instruction of his ministers, whether men or angels. Thus we see from the

traditions and teaching of the Jews how their Kabbalah and our magic first entered the world. I shall now examine and consult Scripture, where, unless I am greatly mistaken, I shall find consequences that necessarily depend upon these principles. So I apply myself to the task.

The first harvest I read of is Cain’s; the first flocks, Abel’s. A shepherd’s life in those early days was no difficult profession: it required care more than art. But how the earth was ploughed before Tubal’s hammers sounded is a farming practice unknown today. Nevertheless the labour was performed, and rewarded. Cain has his sheaves as Abel has his lambs: both receive a benefit and both acknowledge it. I find a priesthood established in these two. Both attend the altar: the first blood was shed in sacrifice, the second in murder.

But I am so dull, so short of syllogisms—those strange pumps and water-drawers that bail truth [New translation of the Latin:] “out of the well” like water—that all my reasoning cannot make these men Levites without revelation. For I ask how they first came to sacrifice, and who initiated them. If you say Adam,

the question is postponed rather than answered, for I ask further: in what school was Adam instructed? I undertake to demonstrate that he could not have invented these shadows and sacraments for himself, and to do so through invincible reason that no adversary shall dare contradict.

In matters of sacrifice, man’s hope and expectation certainly rest in the thing signified, rather than in the sign itself. The material, corruptible shadow is no object of faith: that object is the spiritual, eternal prototype that answers to it and makes the dead figure effective. The Old Testament’s sacrifices and the New Testament’s elements can be acceptable to God only in relation to Christ Jesus, the great and perfect sacrifice offered once for all. Plainly, then, sacrifices were first instituted on supernatural grounds. No reason can be found in Nature why God should be pleased by the death of his creatures. Indeed, the contrary is written in that book: death, whether natural or violent, proceeds from the Creator’s displeasure, rather than his pleasure. I know the learned al-Kindi bases the efficacy of sacrifices on the sympathy between parts and the great world. For in every animal there is a portion

of star-fire. When the compound dissolves, this fire unites with the general fire from which it first came, and produces sensation or motion in the limbus with which it unites. This is indeed true; but that motion causes no joy there and consequently brings no reward to the sacrificer. For I shall show elsewhere that the astral mother mourns, rather than rejoices, at her children’s death. Now, looking back to those first two sacrificers, we find Abel and his offering accepted. This could not have happened unless he offered it as a symbol or figure of his Saviour. To press my argument home: knowledge of the type through whom all offerings were acceptable could not be obtained through human effort, but solely through revelation. Christ Jesus’s Passion was an ordinance wrapped in God’s secret will: anyone wishing to know it must necessarily belong to his counsel. Hence Scripture calls it the hidden mystery, for its truth and certainty could be received only from him who had both the will and power to ordain it. But if, like the author of the Predicables, you tell me that people first sacrificed from natural instinct and without regard to the type—[Original marginal citation: Porphyry, On Sacrifice]—I shall thank you indeed for my