The Glasse of Time Author:Thomas Peyton Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THE GLASSE OF TIME IN THE FIRST AGE. THE ARGUMENT. The author first, doth Gods assistance crave, Throughout the worlce that he his help may have; The... more » sacred Sabbaoth, Satans envious gall, The woman fram'd, and mans most dismal fall; The tree of Life protected from the Brute, The tree of Knowledge with her fatal fruit: Forfeare the world should be finally ended, Gods dearest Daughters down.in hast descended, The flaming sword tlie tree of Life which guarded, The Cherubims upon the Wall that warded. The land of Eden is described at large, Heavens judgment just to all mens future cliarge. Since true examples in Gods holy Booke, Are found of those that in it love to looke, Of men whose Image, portraiture and soule, Have beene transform'd to monstrous shapes and soule According as their lives have pleasing beene, To him whose sight their secret thoughts hath seene, And as his goodnesse sacred is that some, Should be examples for these times to come: His Church to comfort, Pagans to appall, To teach to us what did to them befall; Within the stories of the new and old, Of many more than can by me be told. And since that Ovid in a pleasing verse, Doth pretty tales and metaphors rehearse, Of men to birds, and then again to beasts, To make you parly at your welcome feasts: Whose fabled fictions warbled in that age, The infancy and sacred pupilage Of the religion which we here maintaine, Under our Soveraignes thrice most happy reigne; May seem from Moses and the rest divine, In 's metaphors to trace them line by line; In some I meane, and not in all his worke, For pleasant folly coucht, therein may lurke, Yet the allusion, and the meaning sure, May reference have unto the scripture pure, And though it shines as Titans westerne rayes, By some 'tis held but wa...« less