VII.

(Jubilee, [^86]cap. xxv. p. 438.)

Here the reader may feel that an Elucidation is requisite to any intelligent idea of what Clement means to say. "We wish he would explain his explanation" of Ezekiel. Let me give a brief rendering of the annotations in Migne, as all that can here be furnished. (1) The tabernacle is the body, as St. Paul uses the word (2 Cor. v. 1-4), and St. Peter (2 Ep. i. 13, 14). (2) The seven periods are the Sabbatical weeks of years leading up to the year of Jubilee. (3) The aplanes chora refers to the old system of astronomy, and its division of the heavens into an octave of spheres, of which the seven inner spheres are those of the seven planets; the fixt stars being in the eighth, which "borders on the intellectual world,"--the abode of spirits, according to Clement.

The Miltonic student will recall the perplexity with which, perhaps, in early years, he first read:--

"They pass the planets seven, and pass the fixt, And that crystalline sphere whose balance weighs The trepidation talked, and that first moved.

Paradise Lost, book iii. 481.

The Copernican system was, even in Milton's time, not generally accepted; but, for one who had personally conversed with Galileo, this seems incorrigibly bad. The true system would have given greater dignity, and in fact a better topography, to his great poem.