wound a thousand and at one blow assassine the honour of a Nation It is as compleat a piece of madness to miscal and rave against the times or think to recal men to reason by a fit of passion Democritus that thought to laugh the times into goodness seems to me as deeply Hypochondriack as Heraclitus that bewailed them It moves not my spleen to behold the multitude in their proper humours that is in their fits of folly and madness as well understanding that wisdom is not prophan'd unto the World and 't is the priviledge of a few to be Vertuous They that endeavour to abolish Vice destroy also Virtue for contraries though they destroy one another are yet in life of one another Thus Virtue abolish vice is an Idea again the community of sin doth not disparage goodness for when Vice gains upon the major part Virtue in whom it remains becomes more excellent and being lost in some multiplies its goodness in others which remain untouched and persist intire in the general inundation I can therefore behold Vice without a Satyr content only with an admonition or instructive reprehension for Noble Natures and such as are capable of goodness are railed into vice that might as easily be admonished into virtue and we should be all so far the Orators of goodness as to protract her from the power of Vice and maintain the cause of injured truth No man can justly censure or condemn another because indeed no man truly knows another This I perceive in my self for I am in the dark to all the world and my nearest friends behold me but in a cloud those that know me but superficially think less of me than I do of my self those of my neer acquaintance think more God who truly knows me knows that I am nothing for he only beholds me and all the world who looks not on us through a derived ray or a trajection of a sensible species but beholds the substance without the helps of accidents and the forms of things as we their operations Further no man can judge another because no man knows himself for we censure others but as they disagree from that humour which we fancy laudible in our selves and commend others but for that wherein they seem to quadrate and consent with us So that in conclusion all is but that we all condem Self-love 'T is the general complaint of these times and perhaps of those past that charity grows cold which I perceive most verified in those which most do manifest the fires and flames of zeal for it is a virtue that best agrees with coldest natures and such as are complexioned for humility But how shall we expect Charity towards others when we are uncharitable to our selves Charity begins at home is the voice of the World yet is every man his greatest enemy and as it were his own Executioner Non occides is the Commandment of God yet scarce observed by any man for I perceive every man is his own Atropos and lends a hand to cut the thred of his own days Cain was not therefore the first Murtherer but Adam who brought in death whereof he beheld the practice and example in his own son Abel and saw that verified in the experience of another which faith could not perswade him in the Theory of himself Sect. 5 There is I think no man that apprehends his own miseries less than my self and no man that so neerly apprehends anothers I could lose an arm without a tear and with few groans methinks be quartered into pieces yet can I weep most seriously at a Play and receive with true passion the counterfeit grief of those known and professed Impostures It is a barbarous part of inhumanity to add unto any afflicted parties misery or indeavour to multiply in any man a passion whose single nature is already above his patience this was the greatest affliction of Job and those oblique expostulations of his Friends a deeper injury than the down-right blows of the Devil It is not the tears of our own eyes only but of our friends also that do exhaust the current of our sorrows which falling into many streams runs more peaceably and is contented with a narrower channel It is an act within the power of charity to translate a passion out of one brest into another and to divide a sorrow almost out of it self for an affliction like a dimension may be so divided as if not indivisible at least to become insensible Now with my friend I desire not to share or participate but to engross his sorrows that by making them mine own I may more easily discuss them for in mine own reason and within my self I can command that which I cannot intreat without my self and within the circle of another I have often thought those noble pairs and examples of friendship not so truly Histories of what had been as fictions of what should be but I now perceive nothing in them but possibilities nor any thing in the Heroick examples of Damon and Pythias Achilles and Patroclus which methinks upon some grounds I could not perform within the narrow compass of my self That a man should lay down his life for his Friend seems strange to vulgar affections and such as confine themselves within that Worldly principle Charity begins at home For my own part I could never remember the relations that I held unto my self nor the respect that I owe unto my own nature in the cause of God my Country and my Friends Next to these three I do embrace my self I confess I do not observe that order that the Schools ordain our affections to love our Parents Wives Children and then our Friends for excepting the injunctions of Religior I do not find in my self such a necessary and indissoluble Sympathy to all those of my blood I hope I do not break the fifth Commandment if I conceive I may love my friend before the nearest of my blood even those to whom I owe the principles of life I never yet cast a true affection on a woman but I have loved my friend as I do virtue my soul my God From hence me thinks I do conceive how God loves man what happiness there is in the love of God Omitting all other there are three most mystical unions two natures in one person three persons in one nature one soul in two bodies For though indeed they be really divided yet are they so united as they seem but one and make rather a duality than two distinct souls Sect. 6 There are wonders in true affection it is a body of Enigma 's mysteries and riddles wherein two so become one as they both become two I love my friend before my self and yet methinks I do not love him enough some few months hence my multiplied affection will make me believe I have not loved him at all when I am from him I am dead till I be with him when I am with him I am not satisfied but
I chuse for my devotions but * our grosser memories have then so little hold of our abstracted understandings that they forget the story and can only relate to our awaked souls a confused and broken tale of that that hath passed Aristotle who hath written a singular Tract of Sleep hath not methinks throughly defined it nor yet Galen though he seem to have corrected it for those Noctambuloes and night-walkers though in their sleep do yet injoy the action of their senses we must therefore say that there is something in us that is not in the jurisdiction of Morpheus and that those abstracted and ecstatick souls do walk about in their own corps as spirits with the bodies they assume wherein they seem to hear and feel though indeed the Organs are destitute of sense and their natures of those faculties that should inform them Thus it is observed that men sometimes upon the hour of their departure do speak and reason above themselves For then the soul beginning to be freed from the ligaments of the body begins to reason like her self and to discourse in a strain above mortality Sect. 12 We tearm sleep a death and yet it is waking that kills us and destroys those spirits that are the house of life 'T is indeed a part of life that best expresseth death for every man truely lives so long as he acts his nature or some way makes good the faculties of himself Themistocles therefore that slew his Soldier in his sleep was a merciful Executioner 't is a kind of punishment the mildness of no laws hath invented * I wonder the fancy of Lucan and Seneca did not discover it It is that death by which we may be literally said to dye daily a death which Adam dyed before his mortality a death whereby we live a middle and moderating point between life and death in fine so like death I dare not trust it without my prayers and an half adieu unto the World and take my farewel in a Colloquy with God The night is come like to the day Depart not thou great God away Let not my sins black as the night Eclipse the lustre of thy light Keep still in my Horizon for to me The Sun makes not the day but thee Thou whose nature cannot sleep On my temples centry keep Guard me ' gainst those watchful foes Whose eyes are open while mine close Let no dreams my head infest But such as Jacob''s temples blest While I do rest my Soul advance Make my sleep a holy trance That I may my rest being wrought Awake into some holy thought And with as active vigour run My course as doth the nimble Sun Sleep is a death O make me try By sleeping what it is to die And as gently lay my head On my grave as now my bed Howere I rest great God let me Awake again at least with thee And thus assur'd behold I lie Securely or to awake or die These are my drowsie days in vain I do now wake to sleep again O come that hour when I shall never Sleep again but wake for ever This is the Dormative I take to bedward I need no other Laudanum than this to make me sleep after which I close mine eyes in security content to take my leave of the Sun and sleep unto the resurrection Sect. 13 The method I should use in distributive Justice I often observe in commutative and keep a Geometrical proportion in both whereby becoming equable to others I become unjust to my self and supererogate in that common principle Do unto others as then wouldst he done unto thy self I was not born unto riches neither is it I think my Star to be wealthy or if it were the freedom of my mind and frankness of my disposition were able to contradict and cross my fates For to me avarice seems not so much a vice as a deplorable piece of madness * to conceive our selves Urinals or be perswaded that we are dead is not so ridiculous nor so many degrees beyond the power of Hellebore as this The opinion of Theory and positions of men are not so void of reason as their practised conclusions some have held that Snow is black that the earth moves that the Soul is air fire water but all this is Philosophy and there is no delirium if we do but speculate the folly and indisputable dotage of avarice to that subterraneous Idol and God of the Earth I do confess I am an Atheist I cannot perswade my self to honour that the World adores whatsoever vertue its prepared substance may have within my body it hath no influence nor operation without I would not entertain a base design or an action that should call me villain for the Indies and for this only do I love and honour my own soul and have methinks two arms too few to embrace my self Aristotle is too severe that will not allow us to be truely liberal without wealth and the bountiful hand of Fortune if this be true I must confess I am charitable only in my liberal intentions and bountiful well-wishes But if the example of the Mite be not only an act of wonder but an example of the noblest Charity surely poor men may also build Hospitals and the rich alone have not erected Cathedrals I have a private method which others observe not I take the opportunity of my self to do good I borrow occasion of Charity from mine own necessities and supply the wants of others when I am in most need my self for it is an honest stratagem to make advantage of our selves and so to husband the acts of vertue that where they were defective in one circumstance they may repay their want and multiply their goodness in another I have not Peru in my desires but a competence and ability to perform those good works to which he hath inclined my nature He is rich who hath enough to be charitable and it is hard to be so poor that a noble mind may not find a way to this piece of goodness He that giveth to the poor lendeth to the Lord there is more Rhetorick in that one sentence than in a Library of Sermons and indeed if those Sentences were understood by the Reader with the same Emphasis as they are delivered by the Author we needed not those Volumes of instructions but might be honest by an Epitome Upon this motive only I cannot behold a Beggar without relieving his Necessities with my Purse or his Soul with my Prayers these scenical and accidental differences between us cannot make me forget that common and untoucht part of us both there is under these Cantoes and miserable outsides these mutilate and semi bodies a soul of the same alloy with our own whose Genealogy is Gods as well as ours and is as fair a way to Salvation as our selves Statists that labour to contrive a Common-wealth without our poverty take away the object of charity not understanding only the Common wealth of Christian but
sunt inter Haereticos deputandi Aug. cont Manich. 24. qu. 3. Sect. 9 Pag. 16 The deepest mysteries that ours contains have not only been illustrated but maintained by Syllogism and the Rule of Reason and since this Book was written by Mr. White in his Institutiones Sacrae And when they have seen the Red Sea doubt not of the Miracle Those that have seen it have been better informed than Sir Henry Blount was for he tells us That he desired to view the passage of Moses into the Red Sea not being above three days journey off but the Jews told him the precise place was not known within less than the space of a days journey along the shore wherefore saith he I left that as too uncertain for any Observation In his Voyage into the Levant Sect. 10 Pag. 19 I had as lieve you tell me that Anima est Angelus hominis est corpus Dei as Entelechia Lux est umbra Dei as actus perspoicui Great variety of opinion there hath been amongst the Ancient Philosophers touching the definition of the Soul Thales his was that it is a Nature without Repose Asclepiades that it is an Exercitation of Sense Hesiod that it is a thing composed of Earth and Water Parmenides holds of Earth and Fire Galen that it is Heat Hippocrates that it is a spirit diffused through the body Some others have held it to be Light Plato saith 't is a Substance moving it self and after him cometh Aristotle whom the Author here reproveth and goeth a degree farther and saith it is Entelechia that is that which naturally makes the body to move But this definition is as rigid as any of the other for this tells us not what the essence origine or nature of the soul is hut only marks an effect of it and therefore signifieth no more than if he had said as the Author's Phrase is that it is Angelus hominis or an Intelligence that moveth man as he supposed those other to do the Heavens Now to come to the definition of Light in which the Author is also unsatisfied with the School of Aristotle he saith It satisfieth him no more to tell him that Lux est actus perspicui than if you should tell him that it is umbra Dei The ground of this definition given by the Peripateticks is taken from a passage in Aristot de anima l. 2. cap. 7. where Aristtotle saith That the colour of the thing seen doth move that which is perspicuum actu i.e. illustratam naturam quae sit in aere aliove corpore transparente and that that in regard of its continuation to the eye moveth the eye and by its help the internal sensorium and that so vision is perform'd Now as it is true that the Sectators of Aristotle are too blame by fastening up on-him by occasion of this passage that he meant that those things that made this impress upon the Organs are meer accidents and have nothing of substance which is more than ever he meant and cannot be maintained without violence to Reason and his own Principles so for Aristotle himself no man is beholden to him for any Science acquir'd by this definition for what is any man the near for his telling him that Colour admitting it to be a body as indeed it is and in that place he doth not deny doth move actu perspicuum when as the perspicuity is in relation to the eye and he doth not say how it comes to be perspicuous which is the thing enquired after but gives it that denomination before the eye hath perform'd its office so that if he had said it had been umbra Dei it would have been as intelligible as what he hath said He that would be satisfied how Vision is perform'd let him see Mr. Hobbs in Tract de nat human cap. 2. For God had not caused it to rain upon the Earth St. Aug. de Genes ad literam cap. 5. 6. salves that expression from any inconvenience but the Author in Pseudodox Epidemic l. 7. cap. 1. shews that we have no reason to be confident that this fruit was an Apple I believe that the Serpent if we shall literally understand it from his proper form and figure made his motion on his belly before the curse Yet the Author himself sheweth in Pseudodox Epidemic lib. 7 cap 1. that the form or kind of this Serpent is not agreed on yet Comestor affirm'd it was a Dragon Eugubinus a Basilisk Delrio a Viper and others a common Snake but of what kind soever it was he sheweth in the same Volume lib. 5. c. 4. that there was no inconvenience that the Temptation should be perform'd in his proper shape I find the tryal of the Pucelage and virginity of Women which God ordained the Jews is very fallible Locus extat Deut. c. 22. the same is affirm'd by Laurentius in his Anatom Whole Nations have escaped the curse of Child-birth which God seems to pronounce upon the whole sex This is attested by Mr. Montaign Les doleurs de l'enfantiment par les medicines pardein mosme estimles grandes quae nous pasons avec tant de Cetemonies ily a des notions entieres qui ne'n fuit mul conte l. 1. des Ess c. 14. Sect. 11 Pag. 21 Who can speak of Eternity without a Soloecism or think thereof without an Extasie Time we may comprehend c. Touching the difference betwixt Eternity and Time there have been great disputes amongst Philosophers some affirming it to be no more than duration perpetual consisting of parts and others to which opinion it appears by what follows in this Section the Author adheres affirmed to use the Author's phrase that it hath no distinction of Tenses but is according to Boetius lib. 5. consol pros 6. his definition interminabilis vitae tota simul perfecta possessio For me Non nostrum est tantas componere lites I shall only observe what each of them hath to say against the other Say those of the first opinion against those that follow Boetius his definition That definition was taken by Boetius out of Plato's Timaeus and is otherwise applyed though hot by Boetius yet by those that follow him than ever Plato intended it for he did not take it in the Abstract but in the Concrete for an eternal thing a Divine substance by which he meant God or his Anima mundi and this he did to the intent to establish this truth That no mutation can befal the Divine Majesty as it doth to things subject to generation and corruption and that Plato there intended not to define or describe any species of duration and they say that it is impossible to understand any such species of duration that is according to the Author's expression but one permanent point Now that which those that follow Boetius urge against the other definition is they say it doth not at all difference Eternity from the nature of Time for they say if it be composed
sweat and affected with this dream I rose and wrote the day and hour and all circumstances thereof in a Paper book which book with many other things I put into a Barrel and sent it from Prague to Stode thence to be conveyed into England And now being at Nurenburgh a Merchant of a noble Family well acquainted with me and my friends arrived there who told me my Father dyed some two months ago I list not to write any lyes but that which I write is as true as strange When I returned into England some four years after I would not open the Barrel I sent from Prague nor look into the Paper book in which I had written this dream till I had called my Sisters and some friends to be witnesses where my self and they were astonished to see my written dream answer the very day of my Father's death I may lawfully swear that which my Kinsman hath heard witnessed by my brother Henry whilst he lived that in my youth at Cambridge I had the like dream of my Mother's death where my brother Henry living with me early in the morning I dreamed that my Mother passed by with a sad countenance and told me that she could not come to my Commencement I being within five months to proceed Master of Arts and she having promised at that time to come to Cambridge And when I related this dream to my brother both of us awaking together in a sweat he protested to me that he had dreamed the very same and when we had not the least knowledge of our Mothers sickness neither in our youthful affections were any whit affected with the strangeness of this dream yet the next Carrier brought us word of our Mothers death Mr. Fiennes Morison in his Itinerary I am not over credulous of such relations but me thinks the circumstance of publishing it at such a time when there were those living that might have disprov'd it if it had been false is a great argument of the truth of it Sect. 12 Pag. 166 I wonder the fancy of Lucan and Seneca did not discover it Eor they had both power from Nero to chuse their deaths Sect. 13 Pag. 169 To conceive our selves Vrinals is not so ridiculous Reperti sunt Galeno Avicenna testibus qui se vasa fictilia crederent idcirco hominum attactum ne confringerentur solicite fugerent Pontan in Attic. bellar Hist 22. Which proceeds from extremity of melancholy Aristot is too severe that will not allow us to be truely liberal without wealth Aristot l. 1. Ethic. c. 8. Sect. 15 Pag. 174 Thy will be done though in mine own undoing This should be the wish of every man and is of the most wise and knowing Le Christien plus humble plus sage meux recognoissant que c'est que de lay se rapporte a son createur de choisir ordonner ce qu'el luy faqt Il ne le supplie dautre chose que sa volunte sort faite Montaign FINIS OBSERVATIONS UPON RELIGIO MEDICI Occasionally Written By Sr. Kenelm Digby Knight The sixth Edition Corrected and Enlarged LONDON Printed for R. Scot T. Basset J. Wright R. Chiswel 1682. OBSERVATIONS UPON RELIGIO MEDICI To the Right Honorable Edward Earl of Dorset Baron of Buckhurst c. My Lord I Received yesternight your Lordships of the nineteenth current wherein you are pleased to oblige me not onely by extream gallant Expressions of favour and kindness but likewise by taking so far into your care the expending of my time during the tediousness of my restraint as to recommend to my reading a Book that had received the honour and safeguard of your approbation for both which I most humbly thank your Lordship And since I cannot in the way of gratefulness express unto your Lordship as I would those hearty sentiments I have of your goodness to me I will at the last endeavour in the way of Duty and Observance to let you see how the little Needle of my Soul is throughly touched at the great Loadstone of yours and followeth suddenly and strongly which way soever you becken it In this occasion the Magnetick motion was impatient to have the Book in my hands that your Lordship gave so advantagious a Character of whereupon I sent presently as late as it was to Paul's Church-yard for this Favourite of yours Religio Medici which after a while found me in a condition fit to receive a Blessing by a visit from any of such Master-pieces as you look upon with gracious eyes for I was newly gotten into my bed This good-natured creature I could easily perswade to be my Bed-fellow and to wake with me as long as I had any edge to enterain my self with the delights I sucked from so noble a conversation And truely my Lord I closed not my eyes 'till I had enricht my self with or at least exactly surveyed all the treasures that are lapped up in the folds of those few sheets To return onely a general commendation of this curious Piece or at large to admire the Author's spirit and smartness were too perfunctory an accompt and too slight an one to fo discerning and stedy an eye as yours after so particular and encharged a Summons to read heedfully this Discourse I will therefore presume to blot a Sheet or two of Paper with my reflections upon sundry passages through the whole Context of it as they shall occurrr to my remembrance Which now your Lordship knoweth this Packet is not so happy as to carry with it any one expression of my obsequiousness to you It will be but reasonable you should even here give over your further trouble of reading what my respect ingageth me to the writing of Whos 's first step is ingenuity and a well-natur'd evenness of Judgement shall be sure of applause and fair hopes in all men for the rest of his Journey And indeed my Lord me thinketh this Gentleman setteth out excellently poised with that happy temper and sheweth a great deal of Judicious Piety in making a right use of the blind zeal that Bigots lose themselves in Yet I cannot satisfie my Doubts throughly how he maketh good his professing to follow the great Wheel of the Church in matters of Divinity which surely is the solid Basis of true Religion for to do so without jarring against the Conduct of the first Mover by Eccentrical and Irregular Motions obligeth one to yield a very dutiful obedience to the determinations of it without arrogating to ones self a controling Ability in liking or misliking the Eaith Doctrine and Constitutions of that Church which one looketh upon as their North-star Whereas if I mistake not this Author approveth the Church of England not absolutely but comparatively with other Reformed Churches My next Reflection is concerning what he hath sprinkled most wittily in several places concerning the Nature and Immortality of a humane Soul and the Condition and State it is in after the dissolution of the Body And here
give me leave to observe what our Country-man Roger Bacon did long ago That those Students who busie themselves much with such Notions as reside wholly to the fantasie do hardly ever become Idoneous for abstracted Metaphysical Speculations the one having bulkie Foundation of Matter or of the Accidents of it to settle upon at the least with one foot The other flying continually even to a lessening pitch in the subtil Air. And accordingly it hath been generally noted That the exactest Mathematicians who converse altogether with Lines Figures and other Differences of Quantity have seldom proved eminent in Metaphysicks or Speculative Divinity Nor again the Professors of these Sciences in the other Arts. Much less can it be expected that an excellent Physician whose fancy is alwayes fraught with the material Drugs that he prescribeth his Apothecary to compound his Medicines of and whose hands are inured to the cutting up and eyes to the inspection of Anatomized Bodies should easily and with success flie his thoughts at so towring a Game as a pure Intellect a separated and unbodied Soul Surely this acute Author 's sharp wit had he orderly applied his Studies that way would have been able to satisfie himself with less labour and others with more plenitude than it hath been the Lot of so dull a brain as mine concerning the Immortality of the Soul And yet I assure you my Lord the little Philosophy that is allowed me for my share demonstrateth this Proposition to me as well as Faith delivereth it which our Physician will not admit in his To make good this Assertion here were very unreasonable since that to do it exactly and without exactness it were not demonstration requireth a total Survey of the whole Science of Bodies and of all the operations that we are conversant with of a rational Creature which I having done with all the succinctness I have been able to explicate so knotty a subject with hath taken me up in the first draught neer two hundred sheets of Paper I shall therefore take leave of this Point with only this Note That I take the Immortality of the Soul under his favour to be of that nature that to them onely that are not versed in the ways of proving it by Reason it is an Article of Faith to others it is an evident Conclusion of demonstrative Science And with a like short Note I shall observe how if he had traced the Nature of the Soul from its first principles he could not have suspected it should sleep in the Grave 'till the Resurrection of the Body Nor would he have permitted his compassionative Nature to imagin it belonged to God's mercy as the Chiliasts did to change its condition in those that are damned from pain to happiness For where God should have done that he must have made that anguished Soul another creature than what it was as to make fire cease from being hot requireth to have it become another thing than the Element of fire since that to be in such a condition as maketh us understand damned souls miserable is a necessary effect of the temper it is in when it goeth out of the Body and must necessarily out of its Nature remain in unvariably for all Eternity Though for the Conceptions of the vulgar part of Mankind who are not capable of such abstruse Nations it be styled and truely too the sentence and punishment of a severe Judge I am extreemly pleased with him when he saith There are not Impossibilities enough in Religion for an Active Faith And no whit less when in Philosophy he will not be satisfied with such naked terms as in Schools use to be obtruded upon easie minds when the Master's fingers are not strong enough to untie the Knots proposed unto them I confess when I enquire what Light to use our Author's Example is I should be as well contented with his silence as with his telling me it is Actus perspicui unless he explicate clearly to me what those words mean which I find very few go about to do Such meat they swallow whole and eject it as entire But were such things Scientifically and Methodically declared they would be of extream Satisfaction and Delight And that work taketh up the greatest part of my formerly-mentioned Treatise For I endeavour to shew by a continued Progress and not by Leaps all the Motions of Nature and unto them to fit intelligibly the terms used by her best Secretaries whereby all wilde fantastick Qualities and Moods introduced for refuges of Ignorance are banished from Commerce In the next place my Lord I shall suspect that our Author hath not pennetrated into the bottom of those Conceptions that deep Scholars have taught us of Eternity Me thinketh he taketh it for an infinite Extension of time and a never ending Revolution of continual succession which is no more like Eternity than a gross Body is like a pure Spirit Nay such an Infinity of Revolutions is demonstrable to be a Contradiction and impossible In the state of Eternity there is no Succession no Change no Variety Souls or Angels in that condition do not so much as change a thought All things notions and actions that ever were are or shall be in any creature are actually present to such an Intellect And this my Lord I aver not as deriving it from Theology and having recourse to beatifick Vision to make good my Tenet for so onely glorified creatures should enjoy such immense knowledge but out of the principles of Nature and Reason and from thence shall demonstrate it to belong to the lowest Soul of the ignorantest wretch whilst he lived in this world since damned in Hell A bold undertaking you will say But I confidently engage my self to it Upon this occasion occurreth also a great deal to be said of the nature of Predestination which by the short touches our Author giveth of it I doubt he quite mistakes and how it is an unalterable Series and Chain of Causes producing infallible and in respect of them necessary Effects But that is too large a Theam to unfold here too vast an Ocean to describe in the scant Map of a Letter And therefore I will refer that to a fitter opportunity fearing I have already too much trespassed upon your Lordship's patience but that indeed I hope you have not had enough to read thus far I am sure my Lord that you who never forgot any thing which deserved a room in your memory do remember how we are told that Abyssus abyssum invocat so here our Author from the Abyss of Predestination falleth into that of the Trinity of Persons consistent with the Indivisibility of the Divine Nature And out of that if I be not exceedingly deceived into a third of mistaking when he goeth about to illustrate this admirable Mystery by a wild discourse of a Trinity in our Souls The dint of Wit is not forcible enough to dissect such tough Matter wherein all the obscure glimmering we gain of that
full Dimensions as Nature can give her none more advantagious the same Person the same Body which your Vertuous and Excellent Mother bore nine Months in her Chast and Honoured Womb and that your Nurse gave suck unto Most certainly it is the same And yet if you consider it well it cannot be doubted but that sublunary Matter being in a perpetual flux and in bodies which have internal Principles of Heat and Motion much continually transpiring out to make room for the supply of new Aliment at the length in long process of time all is so changed as that Ship at Athens may as well be called the same Ship that was there two hundred years before and whereof be reason of the continual reparations not one foot of the Timber is remaining in her that builded her at the first as this Body now can be called the same it was forty years agone unless some higher consideration keep up the Identity of it Now what that is let us examine and whether or no it will reach to our difficulty of the Resurrection Let us consider then how that which giveth the Numerical Individuation to a Body is the Substantial Form As long as that remaineth the same though the Matter be in a continual Flux and Motion yet the Thing is still the same There is not one drop of the same Water in the Thames that ran down by White-Hall yesternight yet no man will deny but that is the same River that was in Queen Elizabeth's time as long as it is supplied from the same Common Stock the Sea Though this Example reacheth not home it illustrateth the thing If then the Form remain absolutely the same after separation from the Matter that it was in the Matter which can happen only to Forms that subsist by themselves as humane Souls it followeth then That whensoever it is united to Matter again all Matter coming out of the same Common Magazine it maketh again the same Man with the same Eyes and all the same Limbs that were formerly Nay he is composed of the same Individual Matter for it hath the same Distinguisher and Individuator to wit the same Form or Soul Matter considered singly by it self hath no Distinction All Matter is in it self the same we must fancy it as we do the indigested Chaos it is a uniformly wide Ocean Particularize a few drops of the Sea by filling a Glass-full of them then that Glass-full is distinguished from all the rest of the watery Bulk But return back those few drops to from whence they were taken and the Glass-full that even now had an Individuation by it self loseth that and groweth one and the same with the other main Stock Yet if you fill your Glass again wheresoever you take it up so it be of the same Uniform Bulk of Water you had before it is the same Glass-full of Water that you had But as I said before this Example fitteth entirely no more than the other did In such abstracted speculations where we must consider Matter without Form which hath no actual Being we must not expect adequated Examples in Nature But enough is said to make a Speculative man see that if God should joyn the Soul of a lately dead man even whilst his dead Corpse should lye entire in his winding-sheet here unto a Body made of Earth taken from some Mountain in America it were most true and certain that the Body he should then lye by were the same Identical Body he lived with before his Death and late Resurrection It is evident that Sameness Thisness and Thatness belongeth not to Matter by it self for a general Indifference runneth through it all but onely as it is distinguished and individuated by the Form Which in our Case whensoever the same Soul doth it must be understood always to be the same Matter and Body This Point thus passed over I may piece to it what our Author saith of a Magazine of Subsistent Forms residing first in the Chaos and hereafter when the World shall have been destroyed by fire in the general heap of Ashes out of which God's Voice did and shall draw them out and clothe them with Matter This Language were handsome for a Poet or Rhetorician to speak but in a Philosopher that should ratiocinate strictly and rigorously I cannot admit it For certainly there are no Subsistent Forms of Corporeal things excepting the Soul of man which besides being an Informing Form hath another particular Consideration belonging to it too long to speak of here But whensoever that Compound is destroyed the Form perisheth with the whole And for the Natural Production of Corporeal things I conceive it to be wrought out by the Action and Passion of the Elements among themselves which introducing new Tempers and Dispositions into the Bodies where these Conflicts pass new Forms succeed old ones when the Dispositions are raised to such a height as can no longer consist with the preceding Form and are in the immediate Degree to fit the succeeding one which they usher in The Mystery of all which I have at large unfolded in my above-mentioned Treatise of the Immortality of the Soul I shall say no more to the first Part of our Physician 's Discourse after I have observed how his Consequence is no good one where he inferreth That if the Devils fore-knew who would be Damned or Saved it would save them the Labour and end their work of tempting Mankind to mischief and evil For whatsoever their Moral Design and Success be in it their Nature impelleth them to be always doing it For on the one sâ—de it is Active in the highest Degree as being pure Acts that is Spirits so on the other side they are Malign in as great an Excess By the one they must be always working wheresoever they may work like Water in a Vessel full of holes that will run out of every one of them which is not stopped By the other their whole Work must be malicious and mischievous Joyning then both these Qualities together it is evident they will always be tempting mankind though they know they shall be frustrate of their Moral End But were it not time that I made an end Yes it is more than time And therefore having once passed the limit that confined what was becoming the next step carried me into the Ocean of Errour which being Infinite and therefore more or less bearing no proportion in it I will proceed a little further to take a short Survey of his Second Part and hope for as easie Pardon after this Addition to my sudden and indigested Remarks as if I had enclosed them up now Methinks he beginneth with somewhat an affected Discourse to prove his natural Inclination to Charity which Vertue is the intended Theam of all the Remainder of his Discourse And I doubt he mistaketh the lowest Orbe or Lembe of that high Seraphick Vertue for the top and perfection of it and maketh a kind of humane Compassion to be
the full measure and complement of happiness where the boundless appetite of that spirit remains compleatly satisfied that it can neither desire addition nor alteration that I think is truly Heaven and this can onely be in the injoyment of that essence whose infinite goodness is able to terminate the desires of it self and the unsatiable wishes of ours wherever God will thus manifest himself there is Heaven though within the circle of this sensible world Thus the Soul of man may be in Heaven any where even within the limits of his own proper body and when it ceaseth to live in the body it may remain in its own soul that is its Creator And thus we may say that St. Paul whether in the body or out of the body was yet in Heaven To place it in the Empyreal or beyond the tenth sphear is to forget the worlds destruction for when this sensible world shall be destroyed all shall then be here as it is now there an Empyreal Heaven a quasi vacuity when to ask where Heaven is is to demand where the Presence of God is or where we have the glory of that happy vision Moses that was bred up in all the learning of the Egyptians committed a gross absurdity in Philosophy when with these eyes of flesh he desired to see God and petitioned his Maker that is truth it self to a contradiction Those that imagine Heaven and Hell neighbours and conceive a vicinity between those two extreams upon consequence of the Parable where Dives discoursed with Lazarus in Abraham's bosome do too grosly conceive of those glorified creatures whose eyes shall easily out-see the Sun and behold without a perspective the extreamest distances for if there shall be in our glorified eyes the faculty of sight and reception of objects I could think the visible species there to be in as unlimitable a way as now the intellectual I grant that two bodies placed beyond the tenth sphear of in a vacuity according to Aristotle's Philosophy could not behold each other because there wants a body or Medium to hand and transport the visible rays of the object unto the sense but when there shall be a general defect of either Medium to convey or light to prepare and dispose that Medium and yet a perfect vision we must suspend the rules of our Philosophy and make all good by a more absolute piece of opticks I cannot tell how to say that fire is the essence of Hell I know not what to make of Purgatory * or conceive a flame that can either prey upon or purifie the substance of a Soul those flames of sulphur mention'd in the Scriptures I take not to be understood of this present Hell but of that to come where fire shall make up the complement of our tortures and have a body or subject wherein to manifest its tyranny Some who have had the honour to be textuary in Divinity are of opinion it shall be the same specifical fire with ours This is hard to conceive yet can I make good how even that may prey upon our bodies and yet not consume us for in this material World there are bodies that persist invincible in the powerfullest flames and though by the action of fire they fall into ignition and liquation yet will they never suffer a destruction I would gladly know how Moses with an actual fire calcin'd or burnt the Golden Calf unto powder for that mystical metal of Gold whose solary and celestial nature I admire exposed unto the violence of fire grows onely hot and liquifies but consumaeth not so when the consumble and volatile pieces of our bodies shall be refined into a more impregnable and fixed temper like Gold though they suffer from the actions of flames they shall never perish but lye immortal in the arms of fire And surely if this frame must suffer onely by the action of this element there will many bodies escape and not onely Heaven but Earth will not be at an end but rather a beginning For at present it is not earth but a composition of fire water earth and air but at that time spoiled of these ingredients it shall appear in a substance more like it self its ashes Philosophers that opinioned the worlds destruction by fire did never dream of annihilation which is beyond the power of sublunary causes for the last action of that element is but vitrification or a reduction of a body into glass and therefore some of our Chymicks facetiously affirm that at the last fire all shall be christallized and reverberated into glass which is the utmost action of that element Nor need we fear this term annihilation or wonder that God will destroy the works of his Creation for man subsisting who is and will then truely appear a Microcosm the world cannot be said to be destroyed For the eyes of God and perhaps also of our glorified selves shall as really behold and contemplate the World in its Epitome or contracted essence as now it doth at large and in its dilated substance in the seed of a Plant to the eyes of God and to the understanding of man there exists though in an invisible way the perfect leaves flowers and fruit thereof for things that are in posse to the sense are actually existent to the understanding Thus God beholds all things who contemplates as fully his works in their Epitome as in their full volume and beheld as amply the whole world in that little compendium of the sixth day as in the scattered and dilated pieces of those five before Sect. 51 Men commonly set forth the torments of Hell by fire and the extremity of corporal afflictions and describe Hell in the same method that Mahomet doth Heaven This indeed makes a noise and drums in popular ears but if this be the terrible piece thereof it is not worthy to stand in diameter with Heaven whose happiness consists in that part that is best able to comprehend it that immortal essence that translated divinity and colony of God the Soul Surely though we place Hell under Earth the Devil's walk and purlue is about it men speak too popularly who place it in those flaming mountains which to grosser apprehensions represent Hell The heart of man is the place the Devils dwell in I feel sometimes a Hell within my self Lucifer keeps his Court in my breast Legion is revived in me * There are as many Hells as Anaxagoras conceited worlds there was more than one Hell in Magdalene when there were seven Devils for every Devil is an Hell unto himself he holds enough of torture in his own ubi and needs not the misery of circumference to afflict him And thus a distracted Conscience here is a shadow or introduction unto Hell hereafter Who can but pity the merciful intention of those hands that do destroy themselves the Devil were it in his power would do the like which being impossible his miseries are endless and he suffers most in that attribute wherein
nothing of the Sin against the Holy Ghost whose cure not onely but whose nature is unknown I can cure the Gout or Stone in some sooner than Divinity Pride or Avarice in others I can cure Vices by Physick when they remain incurable by Divinity and shall obey my Pills when they contemn their precepts I boast nothing but plainly say we all labour against our own cure for death is the cure of all diseases There is no Catholicon or universal remedy I know but this which though nauseous to queasie stomacks yet to prepared appetites is Nectar and a pleasant potion of immortality Sect. 10 For my Conversation it is like the Sun 's with all men and with a friendly aspect to good and bad Methinks there is no man bad and the worst best that is while they are kept within the circle of those qualities wherein they are good there is no mans mind of such discordant and jarring a temper to which a tunable disposition may not strike a harmony Magnae virtutes nec minora vitia it is the posie of the best natures * and may be inverted on the worst there are in the most depraved and venemous dispositions certain pieces that remain untoucht which by an Antiperistasis become more excellent or by the excellency of their antipathies are able to preserve themselves from the contagion of their enemy vices and persist intire beyond the general corruption For it is also thus in nature The greatest Balsomes do lie enveloped in the bodies of most powerful Corrosives I say moreover and I ground upon experience * that poisons contain within themselves their own Antidote and that which preserves them from the venome of themselves without which they were not deleterious to others onely but to themselves also But it is the corruption that I fear within me not the contagion of commerce without me 'T is that unruly regiment within me that will destroy me 't is I that do infect my self ‖ the man without a Navel yet lives in me I feel that original canker corrode and devour me and therefore Defenda me Dios de me Lord deliver me from my self is a part of my Letany and the first voice of my retired imaginations There is no man alone because every man is a Microcosm and carries the whole World about him Nunquam minus solus quà m cum solus though it be the Apothegme of a wise man is yet true in the mouth of a fool indeed though in a Wilderness a man is never alone not only because he is with himself and his own thoughts but because he is with the Devil who ever consorts with our solitude and is that unruly rebel that musters up those disordered motions which accompany our sequestred imaginations And to speak more narrowly there is no such thing as solitude nor any thing that can be said to be alone and by it self but God who is his own circle and can subsist by himself all others besides their dissimilary and Heterogeneous parts which in a manner multiply their natures cannot subsist without the concourse of God and the society of that hand which doth uphold their natures In brief there can be nothing truly alone and by its self which is not truly one and such is only God All others do transcend an unity and so by consequence are many Sect. 11 Now for my life it is a miracle of thirty years which to relate were not a History but a piece of Poetry and would sound to common ears like a Fable for the World I count it not an Inn but an Hospital and a place not to live but to dye in The world that I regard is my self it is the Microcosm of my own frame that I cast mine eye on for the other I use it but like my Globe and turn it round sometimes for my recreation Men that look upon my outside perusing only my condition and Fortunes do err in my Altitude for I am above Atlas his shoulders The earth is a point not only in respect of the Heavens above us but of that heavenly and celestial part within us that mass of Flesh that circumscribes me limits not my mind that surface that tells the Heavens it hath an end cannot perswade me I have any I take my circle to be above three hundred and sixty though the number of the Ark do measure my body it comprehendeth not my mind whilst I study to find how I am a Microcosm or little World I find my self something more than the great There is surely a piece of Divinity in us something that was before the Elements and owes no homage unto the Sun Nature tells me I am the Image of God as well as Scripture he that understands not thus much hath not his introduction or first lesson and is yet to begin the Alphabet of man Let me not injure the felicity of others if I say I am as happy as any Ruat coelum Fiat voluntas tua salveth all so that whatsoever happens it is but what our daily prayers desire In brief I am content and what should providence add more Surely this is it we call Happiness and this do I enjoy with this I am happy in a dream and as content to enjoy a happiness in a fancy as others in a more apparent truth and realty There is surely a neerer apprehension of any thing that delights us in our dreams than in our waked senses without this I were unhappy for my awaked judgment discontents me ever whispering unto me that I am from my friend but my friendly dreams in night requite me and make me think I am within his arms I thank God for my happy dreams as I do for my good rest for there is a satisfaction unto reasonable desires and such as can be content with a fit of happiness And surely it is not a melancholy conceit to think we are all asleep in this World and that the conceits of this life are as meer dreams to those of the next as the Phantasms of the night to the conceits of the day There is an equal delusion in both and the one doth but seem to be the embleme or picture of the other we are somewhat more than our selves in our sleeps and the slumber of the body seems to be but the waking of the soul It is the ligation of sense but the liberty of reason and our waking conceptions do not match the Fancies of our sleeps At my Nativity my Ascendant was the watery sign of Scorpius I was born in the Planetary hour of Saturn and I think I have a piece of that Leaden Planet in me I am no way facetious nor disposed for the mirth and galliardize of company yet in one dream I can compose a whole Comedy behold the action apprehend the justs and laugh my self awake at the conceits thereof were my memory as faithful as my reason is then fruitful I would never study but in my dreams and this time also would
inaccessible Light cometh to us cloathed in the dark Weeds of Negations and therefore little can we hope to meet with any positive Examples to parallel it withal I doubt he also mistaketh and imposeth upon the several Schools when he intimateth that they gain-say this visible worlds being but a Picture or Shadow of the Invisible and Intellectual which manner of Philosophizing he attributeth to Hermes Trismegistus but is every where to be met with in Plato and is raised since to a greater height in the Christian Schools But I am sure he learned in no good School nor sucked from any good Philosophy to give an actual Subsistence and Being to first Matter without a Form He that will allow that a Real Existence in Nature is as superficially tincted in Metaphysicks as another would be in Mathematicks that should allow the like to a Point a Line or a Superficies in Figures These in their strict Notions are but Negations of further Extension or but exact Terminations of that Quantity which falleth under the Consideration of the Understanding in the present purpose no real Entities in themselves so likewise the Notions of Matter Form Act Power Existence and the like that are with Truth considered by the Understanding and have there each of them a distinct Entity are nevertheless no where by themselves in Nature They are terms which we must use in the Negotiations of our thoughts if we will discourse consequently and conclude knowingly But then again we must be very wary of attributing to things in their own Natures such Entities as we create in our Understandings when we make Pictures of them there for there every different consideration arising out of the different impression which the same thing maketh upon us hath a distinct Being by it self Whereas in the thing there is but one single Vnity that sheweth as it were in a Glass at several positions those various faces in our understanding In a word all these words are but artificial terms not real things And the not right understanding of them is the dangerousest Rock that Scholars suffer shipwrack against I go on with our Physician 's Contemplations Upon every occasion he sheweth strong parts and a vigorous brain His wishes and aims and what he pointeth at speak him owner of a noble and a generous heart He hath reason to wish that Aristotle had been as accurate in examining the Causes Nature and Affections of the great Universe he busied himself about as his Patriarch Galen hath been in the like considerations upon this little World Man's Body in that admirable Work of his De Vsu Partium But no great humane thing was ever born and perfected at once It may satisfie us if one in our age buildeth that magnificent Structure upon the others foundations and especially if where he findeth any of them unsound he eradicateth those and sixeth new unquestionable ones in their room But so as they still in gross keep a proportion and bear a Harmony with the other great Work This hath now even now our learned Countryman done The knowing Mr. White whose name I believe your Lordship hath met with al in his excellent Book De Mundo newly printed at Paris where he now resideth and is admired by the World of Letter'd men there as the Prodigie of these latter times Indeed his three Dialogues upon that Subject if I am able to judge any thing are full of the profoundest Learning I ever yet met withal And I believe who hath well read digested them will perswade himself there is no truth so abstruse nor hitherto conceived out of our reach but mans wit may raise Engines to scale and conquer I assure my self when our Author hath studied him throughly he will not lament so loud for Aristotle's mutilated and defective Philosophy as in Boccaline Caesar Caporali doth for the loss of Livies ship-wracked Decads That Logick which he quarrelleth at for calling a Toad or Serpent ugly will in the end agree with his for no body ever took them to be so in respect of the Vniverse in which regard he desendeth their Regularity and Symmetry but onely as they have relation to us But I cannot so easily agree with him where he affirmeth that Devils or other Spirits in the Intellectual World have no exact Ephemerides wherein they may read before-hand the Stories of fortuite Accidents For I believe that all Causes are so immediately chained to their Effects as if a perfect knowing Nature get hold but of one link it will drive the entire Series or Pedigree of the whole to its utmost end as I think I have proved in my fore-named Treatise so that in truth there is no Fortuitness or Contingency of things in respect of themselves but onely in respect of us that are ignorant of their certain and necessary Causes Now a little Series or Chain and Complex of all outward Circumstances whose highest link Poets say prettily is fasten'd to Jupiter's Chair and the lowest is riveted to every Individual on Earth steered and levelled by God Almighty at the first setting out of the first Mover I conceive to be that Divine Providence and Mercy which to use our Author 's own Example giveth a thriving Genius to the Hollanders and the like And not any secret invisible mystical Blessing that falleth not under the search or cognizance of a prudent indagation I must needs approve our Authors Aequanimity and I may as justly say his Magnanimity in being contented so cheerfully as he saith to shake hands with the fading Goods of Fortune and be deprived of the joys of her most precious blessings so that he may in recompence possess in ample measure the true ones of the mind like Epictetus that Master of moral Wisdom and Piety who taxeth them of high injustice that repine at Gods Distribution of his Blessings when he putteth not into their share of goods such things as they use no Industry or Means to purchase For why should that man who above all things esteemeth his own freedom and who to enjoy that sequestreth himself from commerce with the vulgar of mankind take it ill of his Stars if such Preferments Honours and Applauses meet not him as are painfully gained after long and tedious Services of Princes and brittle Dependances of humorous Favourites and supple Compliances with all sorts of Natures As for what he saith of Astrologie I do not conceive that wise men reject it so much for being repugnant to Divinity which he reconcileth well enough as for having no solid Rules or ground in Nature To rely too far upon that vain Art I judge to be rather folly than impiety unless in our censure we look to the first Origine of it which favoureth of the Idolatry of those Heathens that worshipping the Stars and heavenly Bodies for Deities did in a superstitious Devotion attribute unto them the Causality of all Effects beneath them And for ought I know the belief of solid Orbs in the Heavens
and their regularly-irregular Motions sprung from the same root And a like Inanity I should suspect in Chiromancy as well as Astrologie especially in particular contingent Effects however our Author and no less a man than Aristotle seem to attribute somewhat more to that conjectural Art of Lines I should much doubt though our Author sheweth himself of another mind that Bernardinus Ochinâ—s grew at the last to be a meer Atheist When after having been first the Institutor and Patriarch of the Capucine-Order so violent was his Zeal then as no former religious Institution though never so rigorous was strict enough for him he from thence fell to be first an Heretick then a Jew and after a while became a Turk and at the last wrote a furious Invective against those whom he called the three Grand Impostors of the World among whom he ranked our Saviour Christ as well as Moses and Mahomet I doubt he mistakes in his Chronologie or the Printer in the name when he maketh Ptolomy condemn the Alchoran He needeth not be so scrupulous as he seemeth to be in averring down-rightly That God cannot do contradictory things though peradventure it is not amiss to sweeten the manner of the expression and the sound of the words for who understandeth the nature of contradiction will find Non-Entity in one of the terms which of God were impiety not to deny peremptorily For he being in his proper Nature Self-Entity all Being must immediately flow from him and all Not-Being be totally excluded from that Efflux Now for the recalling of Time past which the Angels posed Esdras withal there is no contradiction in that as is evident to them that know the essence of Time For it is but putting again all things that had motion into the same state they were in at that moment unto which time was to be reduced back and from thence letting it travel on again by the same motion and upon the same wheels it rouled upon before And therefore God could do this admirable Work though neither Esdras nor all the power of Creatures together could do it And consequently it cannot in this Question be said that he posed Mortality with what himself was not able to perform I acknowledge ingenuously our Physician 's experience hath the advantage of my Philosophy in knowing there are Witches Yet I am sure I have no temptation to doubt of the Deity nor have any unsatisfaction in believing there are Spirits I do not see such a necessary conjunction between them as that the supposition of the one must needs infer the other Neither do I deny there are Witches I only reserve my Assent till I meet with stronger motives to carry it And I confess I doubt as much of the efficacy of those Magical Rules he speaketh of as also of the finding out of Mysteries by the courteous Revelation of Spirits I doubt his Discourse of an Vniversal Spirit is but a wild Fancy and that in the marshalling of it he mistaketh the Hermetical Philosophers And surely it is a weak argument from a common nature that subsisteth only in our understanding out of which it hath no being at all to infer by parity an actual Subsistence or the like in reality of nature of which kind of miscarriage in mens discoursings I have spoken before And upon this occasion I do not see how seasonably he falleth of a sudden from natural Speculations to a Moral Contemplation of Gods Spirit working in us In which also I would enquire especially upon his sudden Poetical rapture whether the Solidity of the Judgement be not out-weighed by the airiness of the Fancy Assuredly one cannot err in taking this Author for a very fine ingenious Gentleman But for how deep a Scholar I leave unto them to judge that are abler than I am If he had applied himself with earnest study and upon right grounds to search out the Nature of pure Intellects I doubt not but his great Parts would have argued more efficaciously than he doth against those that between Men and Angels put only Porphyrie ' difference of Mortality and Immortality And he would have dived further into the tenour of their Intellectual Operations in which there is no Succession nor ratiocinative Discourse for in the very first instant of their Creation they actually knew all that they were capable of knowing and they are acquainted even with all free thoughts past present and to come for they see them in their causes and they see them all together at one instant as I have in my fore-mentioned Treatise proved at large And I think I have already touched thus much once before in this Letter I am tempted here to say a great deal concerning Light by his taking it to be a bare Quality For in Physicks no Speculation is more useful or reacheth further But to set down such Phaenomena's of it as I have observed and from whence I evidently collect the Nature of it were too large a Theam for this place When your Lordship pleaseth I shall shew you another more orderly Discourse upon that Subject wherein I have sufficiently proved it to be a solid Substance and Body In his proceeding to collect an Intellectual World and in his discoursing upon the place and habitation of Angels as also in his consideration of the activity of glorified Eyes which shall be in the state of rest whereas motion is required to seeing and in his subtil Speculation upon two Bodies placed in the Vacuity beyond the utmost all-enclosing Superficie of Heaven which implieth a Contradiction in Nature methinks I hear Apelles cry out Ne sutor ultra Crepidam or rather it putteth me in mind of one of the Titles in Pantagruel's Library which he expresseth himself conversant in namely Quaestio subtilissima utrum Chimaera in vacuo bombinans possit comedere Secundas intentiones with which short Note I will leave these Considerations in which if time and other circumstances allowed it matter would spring up of excellent Learning When our Author shall have read Mr. Whites Dialogue of the World he will no longer be of the Opinion That the Unity of the World is a conclusion of Faith For it is there demonstrated by Reason Here the thread of the Discourse inviteth me to say a great deal of the Production or Creation of Mans Soul But it is too tedious and too knotty a piece for a Letter Now it shall suffice to note that it is not Ex traduce and yet hath a strange kind of near dependance of the Body which is as it were Gods instrument to create it by This thus said or rather tumbled out may seem harsh But had your Lordship leisure to peruse what I have written at full upon this Point I doubt not but it would appear plausible enough to you I cannot agree with him when he seemeth to impute Inconvenience to long Life and that length of time doth rather impair than improve us For surely if we will follow the
we must consider what it is that bringeth us to this excellent State to be happy in the other World of Eternity and Immutability It is agreed on all hands to be God's Grace and Favour to us But all do not agree by what steps his Grace produceth this effect Herein I shall not trouble your Lordship with a long Discourse how that Grace worketh in us which yet I will in a word touch anon that you may conceive what I understand Grace to be but will suppose it to have wrought its effect in us in this life and from thence examine what hinges they are that turn us over to Beatitude and Glory in the next Some consider God as a Judge that rewardeth or punisheth men according as they co-operated with or repugned to the Grace he gave That according as their actions please or displease him he is well affected towards them or angry with them and accordingly maketh them to the purpose and very home feel the effects of his kindness or indignation Others that fly a higher pitch and are so happy Vt rerum poterint cognoscere causas do conceive that Beatitude and misery in the other life are effects that necessarily and orderly flow out of the Nature of those Causes that begot them in this life without engaging God Almighty to give a sentence and act the part of a Judge according to the state of our Cause as it shall appear upon the Accusations and pleadings at his great Bar. Much of which manner of expression is Metaphorical and rather adapted to contain vulgar minds in their Duties that are awed with the thought of a severe Judge sifting every minute-action of theirs than such as we must conceive every circumstance to pass so in reality as the literal sound of the words seems to infer in ordinary construction and yet all that is true too in its genuine sence But my Lord these more penetrating men and that I conceive are vertuous upon higher and stronger Motives for they truely and solidly know why they are so do consider that what impressions are once made in the spiritual Substance of a Soul and what affections it hath once contracted do ever remain in it till a contrary and diametrically contradicting judgement and affection do obliterate it and expel it thence This is the reason why Contrition Sorrow and Hatred for Sins past is encharged us If then the Soul do go out of the Body with impressions and affections to the Objects and pleasures of this life it continually lingreth after them and as Virgil learnedly as well as wittily saith Quae gratia currum Armorumque fuit vivis quae cura nitentes Pascere equos eadem sequitur tellure repostos But that being a State wherein those Objects neither are nor can be enjoyed it must needs follow that such a Soul must be in an exceeding anguish sorrow and affliction for being deprived of them and for want of that it so much prizeth will neglect all other contentments it might have as not having a relish or taste moulded and prepared to the savouring of them but like feavorish tongues that when they are even scorched with heat take no delight in the pleasingest liquors but the sweetest drinks seem bitter to them by reason of their overflowing Gall So they even hate whatsoever good is in their power and thus pine away a long Eternity In which the sharpness and activity of their pain anguish and sad condition is to be measured by the sensibleness of their Natures which being then spiritual is in a manner infinitely more than any torment that in this life can be inflicted upon a dull gross body To this add the vexation it must be to them to see how inestimable and infinite a good they have lost and lost meerly by their own fault and for momentary trifles and childrens play and that it was so easie for them to have gained it had they remained but in their right senses and governed themselves according unto Reason And then judge in what a tortured condition they must be of remorse and execrating themselves for their most resupine and sensless madness But if on the other side a Soul be released out of this Prison of clay and flesh with affections setled upon Intellectual goods as Truth knowledge and the like and that it be grown to an irksome dislike of the flat pleasures of this World and look upon carnal and sensual Objects with a disdainful eye as discerning the contemptible Inanity in them that is set off only by their painted outside and above all that it hath a longing desire to be in the Society of that supereminent Cause of Causes in which they know are heaped up the Treasurers of all Beauty Knowledge Truth Delight and good whatsoever and therefore are impatient at the Delay and reckon all their Absence from him as a tedious Banishment and in that regard hate their Life and Body as Cause of this Divorce such a Soul I say must necessarily by reason of the temper it is wrought into enjoy immediately at the instant of the Bodies dissolution and its liberty more Contentment more Joy more true Happiness than it is possible for a heart of flesh to have scarce any scantling of much less to comprehend For immense Knowledge is natural to it as I have touched before Truth which is the adequated and satisfying Object of the Understanding is there displayed in her own Colours or rather without any And that which is the Crown of all and in respect of which all the rest is nothing that infinite Entity which above all things this Soul thirsteth to be united unto cannot for his own Goodness sake deny his Embraces to so affectionate a Creature and to such an enflamed Love If he should then were that Soul for being the best and for loving him most condemned to be the unhappiest For what Joy could she have in any thing were she barrred from what she so infinitely loveth But since the Nature of superiour and excellent things is to shower down their propitious Influences wheresoever there is a Capacity of receiving them and no Obstacle to keep them out like the Sun that illuminateth the whole Air if no Cloud or solid opacous Body intervene it followeth clearly that this infinite Sun of Justice this immense Ocean of Goodness cannot chuse but inviron with his Beams and replenish even beyond satiety with his delightsome Waters a soul so prepared and tempered to receive them No my Lord to make use of this Discourse and apply it to what begot it be pleased to determine which way will deliver us evenest and smoothest to this happy end of our Journey To be vertuous for hope of a Reward and through fear of Punishment or to be so out of a natural and inward affection to Vertue for Vertues and Reasons sake Surely one in this latter condition not onely doth those things which will bring him to Beatitude but he is so secured in a