Now if the Aire absent it selfe, which associates and unites them together, as being suppeditated and banished, which is moist and hot, from the extreame drynesse and coldnesse of the earth, it will force it with all its power to reject the water, and so reduce it selfe to its first drynesse; which we may perceive in Sand, which will never receive water, except it be quickly separated. Even so the earth is alwaies rebellious and contumacious of it selfe to bee mollified, be it by water, by aire, by fire; and after this manner there was a spirit of contradiction and disobedience introduced into _Adam_, by reason of the earth, whereof he was formed: as his Companion and himselfe do shew, when by the suggestion of the Serpent, the most terrestriall animall of all others, they so easily contradicted that extreame prohibition which was given them of not tasting the fruit of the knowledge of good and evill: for the punishment whereof, it was said to the Serpent, _thou shallt eat earth all the dayes of thy life_: which _Isaiah_ resumes in 65. chap. _Dust is thy bread_: And to _Adam_, that _the earth should produce nothing but thornes, briars, and thistles_, by means whereof, if he would live, he must cultivate it with the sweat of his browes, till returne to that from whence he was drawne, for being dust hee must returne to dust. But water which notifies Divine speculations, disirous to mingle, and unite with all things, to whom it gave beginning, and made them grow and multiply, is as the carriage or vestment of the spirit, following that which was said in the beginning of the Creation, that the Spirit of God was stretched over the waters, or as the Hebrew word _Marachephet_ caries it, hovering over them, fomenting and vivifying them, as a Henne doth her Chickens, with a connaturall heat; for this word _Elohim_ imports I know not what, of heate and fire. By Water then the docill spirit, obedient to the invitations of the intellect, insinuated it selfe into _Adam_; and by Earth the refractory, and opiniaster, that spurneth against the pricke; for as the earth was the most ignoble Element of all others, water rejecteth it, and disdaineth it, and could agree with it, but as to a lee and excrement; but if the pure and neat spirit remaines within the water, where it made choice of its residence; for from the three natures of earth, water at least never joines with the two, (that is to say) sand, for its extreame drynesse that causeth a discontinuation of parts: and the dirt to be fatty and unctuous: there is not any thing else, but slime only, with which some food and mingling which may bee thereof made, the water at last lets it reside below, and it swimmes over: as being of a contrary nature, the one altogether immoveable, solid, and compact; the other fluent, removing, and gliding as bloud through the veines, wherein the spirits reside; who can easily bee elevated to bee of a fiery quality, alwayes soring upward: So that the