LET. XIX. AND ABERRATION OF LIGHT. ZH

diffused through the universe; which being im-pelled by the sun, strikes upon our eyes, in thefame manner as a staff that is pushed at one endpresses in the same instant at the other. Mosesmakes light tq have been the first of createdthings ; and Miltoq, in one of the noblest invo-cations that poetry can boast, thus expresses thesame sentiment.

,l Hail holy light, offspring of heav’n first-born,

Or of thl eternal co-eternal beam,

May I express thee unblam’d ? since God is light,

And never but in unapproached lightDwelt from eternity, dwelt then in thee.

Bright effluence of bright essence increate.

Or hear’st thou rather pure ethereal stream.

Whose fountain who shall tell? before the fun,

Before the heav’ns thou wert, and at the voiceOf God, as with a mantle, didst investThe rising world of waters dark and deep.

Won from the void and formless infinite.’*

The sacred author places the formation oflight four days before that of the fun ; and inthis he appears to have been followed by allthe philosophers of antiquity. It was, in thosetimes, the general opiniou, that the fun was notthe source of light, but that he served to impeland spread it through space,

“ Of all celestial bodies first the funA mighty sphere he fram’d, unlightsome first,

Though of ethereal mould: then form’d the moon

X 4 Globose,

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