Church Militant to be most like the Church Triumphant for in Heaven which is nothing els but one great Temple ther is among the Angels which are compounded of Essence and Existence as you and I are of matter and form ther is I say a most exact order They are divided to three Hierarchies in every Hierarchy ther are three orders The first consists of Seraphims the second of Cherubims the third of Thrones The second consists of Dominations of Vertues and powers The third consists of Principalities of Archangels and Angels Now those of the supremest Hierarchy partake of Divine illuminations in a greater measure then of the inferior and they one to another in respective manner who are subordinat unto them you and I are created in a capacity to dwell in that Temple of Eternity you after the Resurrection and I as soon as I part with you to see the face of my Creator and converse with those holy Angels by thoughts and looks Body 'T is hard for flesh and blood to beleeve that considering the immense distance which is twixt this ball of earth and 〈◊〉 Empyrean Heaven you should so instantaneously arrive thither to behold the beatificall vision For the lowest neighbour to earth of all the celestiall bodies which is the Moon is by the opinion of the best Astronomers computed to be 52. Semidiameters distant from the earth every diameter containing nere upon 3500. miles so that put case one could fly thither and mount 100. miles an hour yet he would be above four months in his journey moreover from the first sphere the primum mobile put case a millstone should descend thence to the centre it would be 60. yeers a coming down though it make 40. miles every hour as the prime of Astronomer averrs therfore under favor how is it possible that you should immediatly upon your separation from me post up with such inexcogitable speed up to Heaven and behold the blissfull vision Soul Touching the operations the movements and conveyancies of Spirits you must know that they are instantaneous and so wonderfull that the speculation thereof strikes Philosophy dumb They need no succession of Time or place as bodies require in their motions they meet with no stop or resistance at all in their passage Now if Light which is nothing els but dilated fire to the utmost tenuity that can be and comes neerest to the nature of a spirit of any corporeal creature if light I say doth exercise its function with such an admirable agility and suddennes as to expand it self from East to West over the whole surface of the Hemisphere what shall we think of Spirits that are far fuller of activity But you must understand that when I am devested of you the wall of partition that interposition is instantly taken away which stood 'twixt me and my Creator who is the Son of the Invisible world as that in the Firmament which you see with the sensitive optiques here is of this Materiall therefore I shall immediatly behold that infinitly more glorious Sun the veyl of flesh being taken away I shall be instantly within the Temple of glory wherof every Corner is fill'd with the light of his countenance insomuch that who is once in it can never be able to go again out of it Therefore though the blessed Angels are employed up and down the world upon his service yet they are alwayes within the verge of the Beatificall vision Body Let it not be held a petulant or impertinent curiosity in me if I covet to know since you now speak of Angels what degrees of difference ther may betwixt Them and separated souls in Heaven Soul As they agree in many things so they also differ in many Angels and separated souls agree in that both of them are spirits both of them are intellectual and eternal Cretures They behold the blissful vision They are Courtiers of Heaven and act meerly by the understanding The merits of Christ was beneficiall to both it made the one capable of the state of glory and it confirm'd the other in it that they can never be Apostats hereafter besides as som hold at the day of judgment they are to receive augmentation of bliss by being freed from further employment cares and solicitings for men and continue in an uninterrupted rest Now as the blessed Angels and separated souls do thus agree so they differ also in sundry things They differ in their very Essentialls for the principles of Angels are meerly metaphysicall viz. Essence and existence but a separated soul continueth still a part of that compositum which formerly consisted of matter and form and is still apt to be reunited to the body till then she is not absolutly completed for all that while she changeth not her nature but her state moreover they differ in the Exercise of the understanding and manner of knowledg for a separated soul knowes still by discours and ratiocination which an Angel doth not They also differ in dignity of nature for Angels have larger illuminations and at the first instant of their Creation they beheld the beatificall vision yet separated souls are capable to mount up to such a height of glory as to bee like them in all things both in point of vision adhaesion and fruitio◠Body But when you are setled in that state of blissfulness how can I expect that you will desire to bee united again to re-efform so frail and foul a thing as this body of mine why may not I think rather that you will assume some body of a nobler and more refined matter according to the speculation of him who imagin'd that rationall soules be they never so pious and pure mount not up presently after their separation from the corrupt mass of flesh to enjoy the Beatificall vision which is the height of all celestiall happiness but first they are carried to the body of the Moon or som other Star according to their degrees of piety and goodness in this life where they enter into and actuar som bodies of a purer mould and being refin'd then they reascend to som higher Star and so to som higher then that till at last they be made capable to behold the lustre of so glorious a Majesty in whose sight no impurity can stand which fancy may be illustrated by this comparison that if a prisoner as I touch elswhere after he hath bin kept close in a dark dungeon for many yeers should bee taken out and brought suddenly to look upon the Sun in the Meridian it would endanger him to bee struck stark blind So no humane polluted soul sallying out of a dark dirty prison as the body is would be possibly able to appear before the incomprehensible Majesty of God or be susceptible of the fulgor of his all-glorious countenance unless he be sitted before hand by certain degrees thereunto which might be done by passing from one Star to another who we are told in a good Text differ one from the other
before Body You raise my heart to an exceeding great height of comfort me thinks you imp this dull body with eagles feathers to fly upwards by telling me that after this transitory life which hangs upon such small filaments of sister threed is cut off I shall be wrought into you again Soul To make this point a little more perspicuous unto you you must consider that matter taken singly by it self hath no distinctive form at all ther is an indifference homogereous identity runs through the whole bulk of Matter it is the substantiall form which is the soul that doth give a distinguishing shape and numericall individuation to every Body now as long as she continueth the same the creture is still the same For that Body of yours though you have not the same flesh about you nor the same blood in your veines which you had twenty yeers ago yet is it still the same body as long as I inform it For as the Bucentoro in Venice is held to be still the same vessel though having bin so often upon the carine new caulk'd ribb'd and plank'd she may not have any of the first timber she was built of in the first dock In like manner humane bodies continue stil the same as long as the same Individuator is in them which is the soul notwithstanding that they are in a continuall fluxibility and a kind of succession of consumption and restauration for although the flesh and bloud in no man be the â—ame in his youth as it was in his Infancy nor the same in his manhood that it was in his youth because they use to wast away by the intern principles of heat as also to transpire breathe out and evaporate insensibly through the pores to make still room for fresh nourishment which is concocted and so converted to new bloud and new flesh yet is the whole body alwayes numerically and individually the same as long as the same soul doth inform and actuat it So at the general resurrection what part or parcell so ever of that indifferentâ—omogeneous huge mass of calcin'd earth and ashes which my Creator shal assign me to reinform it will be the very same that you bear about you now though much refin'd and so we shal cohabit eternally without any future divorce Body The Revolution of Plato's great yeer seems to have some analogie with our Resurrection whereof that divine and high soaring Philosopher might have a glimps when he held that after such a period of yeers the world should be repeepled by the same Cretures which makes me think now that you have quickned my spirits with these plesing ideas upon the witty answer of the Tapster at Botley who having fill'd two pots of ale to a poor scholler as he was returning from Wales to Oxford and the scholler telling him that he had spent all his money in his journey but he would pay him the next time they met The Tapster ask'd when that would be why said the scholler if it be not sooner we are sure to meet here again at the revolution of Platoes great yeer for at the period of so many thousand yeers all things return to their former state you and I shall meet here just as we do now with the same bodies and minds for so the world hath continued hitherto and will so renew for ever why then said the Tapster you and I mett here so many thousand yeers ago yes said he I thank you for putting me in mind of it for I remember you left then two pots of ale upon the score pay me for them first and then I will trust you for these two Soul It cannot bee denyed but those great students of nature though they were soly guided by her twilights had many glances of divine illuminations Now touching these mysterious tenets of christian religion it is with them as with the body of the Sun ther is somwhat in that glorious Planet according to the comparison of a very ancient Father of the Church which we may behold if we will bâ—e contented to see that we may freely do ti But ther is somwhat in the Sun that may not be look'd on now if wee bee not satisfied to see what wee may see we may chance come to sâ—e nothing at all for he that gazeth and setleth his optiques too fixedly on the Sun comes to see nothing at all for he loseth his eyes So the mysteries of saving Faith ther is much in them that may bee apprehended by the faculty of Reson and by what is reveal'd unto us but if we will not be contented with that but pry further wee may not only be dazzled but struck stark blind therefore wee must contemplat them with reservednes and sobriety This may bee also paralell'd with the Moon Ther is somwhat in the opacous orb of the Moon that no mortall yet could ever come to the knowledge of it The Astronomers by all their curious inspections and optic instruments cannot tell what are the spots what the darkness is that goes interwoven in the body of the Moon though she be nearest neighbour to us of all the heavenly But there is somwhat in that Planet which wee can tell what it is and it is the luminous part by that it affords us light to know what it is So in the high points of salvation ther be some dark parts that are not comprehensible and ther be other parts that are comprehensible the first we may boldly look upon but for the other the dark and abstruse parts we must close our eyes and sit down with admiration and comfort our selves that wee cannot understand them That ther is somthing in this great work which concerns us yet 't is impossible to bee comprehended Touching the parts which may be understood we may look on them with a modest eye of inspection but the parts that are obscure and cannot be look'd on wee must not bee overcurious to find prospectives to look into them but believe them let it satisfie us that they cannot be discern'd by mortall eye in regard it is the pleasure of God not to have them known let us be contented to bee ignorant of that which God would have us to bee ignorant of till our Faith bee turn'd to intuition and where the understanding shall be adaequate to Truth as Truth is the adaequat object of the understanding which must be in the other world in that true Region of intellectuall light where such abstracted speculations that so much puzzle us here shall be as clear as the Sun in the Meridian where we shall conceive the true sense of the ninth of the Romans of the Apocalyps of Saint Iohn and all other passages of holy Scripture without an Interpreter and not to be subject to false judgments constructions or glosses Body What an unutterable kind of joy do I feel running through al the veines of my heart to hear that this flesh of mine shall rise again to be worn and actuated by
diseases The Third to wit the Rational not onely to all these but to vexation of spirit to corroding cares to griping thoughts to a perpetual clashing and combating of the humours insomuch that Man of all creatures is Heautontimorumenos a self-tormenter a persecutor and crucifier of himself all which are emanations from the Intellectual soul which besides useth to puzzle the brain with sturdie doubts and odd furrnises touching the mysteries of saving Faith whereas indeed as sense should vail to reason so reason should strike sail to faith moreover she is forward oftentimes to question the very works of Creation and quarrel with Nature the hand-maid of the Almighty in the method of her Productions as to make one instance for all the Philosopher was angry with Her because She did not make the stones of the river for bread as she did the water thereof for drink Soul 'T is true to answer the first part of your answer that it is my office to inform and actuat you which operations are emanations from me I am I confess being undivisible inextensive without parts and inorganical Tota in toto tota in qualibet parte I am diffused up down throughout that fabrick of flesh I am all in the whole and all in every part you have no movement at all without me but you yielding more obedience and being more plyable to the sensual appetit and the Will than to the dictates and directions of the Intellect my principal facultie have brought me to this pass whereas those eyes of yours should be as crystal casements through which I might behold the glorious firmament and studie my Creator in the Volumes of Nature you have made them to intromit and let out beams of vanity and lightness They are foyl'd so thick with earth that I can scarce discern Heaven through them Those ears of yours whereas they should let in holy Exhortations and wholsom Precepts you have used them as trunks to receive any idle discourses and vain sounds they have delighted more to hear Carrolls and Catches than Hymns and Anthems That mouth tongue and voice of yours whereas they were given you for Organs to sound out the glory of your Creator and sing Halelujahs unto Him you have made them Instruments of equivocation and profaness Those hands of yours whereas they were designed to be stretched forth to do deeds of Charitie and to pen Divine Meditations you have employed them to work your own revenges and to scribble idle frivilous fancies That throat of yours whereas it was created for a conduit-pipe to let out Pious Ejaculations you have made it the gullet of luxury and excess Those feet of yours whereas they were made you to walk in the paths of Pietie and Vertue and lead you to Gods holy House you have us'd them to run into the road of all licentiousness When I examine your heart the seat of your affections whereas you should have made it a Closet for your Creator to reside in and kept it sweet and cleanly for that purpose I find you have made it a cage of unclean birds of hatred hypocrisie choller and spirituall pride the fuliginous evaporation whereof hath fum'd up into your brain and infected all the cels thereof your Fantasie hath been extravagant and wild your Memorie hath been like a fierce that hath kept the chaff and let out the pure grain you have been more mindfull of bad than good turns your understanding hath been full of scepticisms your will hath clashed with Reason your Reason with Faith your Faith with Heaven In fine when I take you all in a lump I find you nought else but a bladder puffed up with ayrie passions and malignant humours amongst whom I am perpetually crucified as betwixt so many Iudases insomuch that I may justly say that you stand as a rotten wall twixt me and the beams of my Creator which would glance upon me with a stronger reverberation were it not for that foul bulk of matter that Cargazon of all sorts of infirmities which are stowed up in that sluggie and frail vessel Bodie A frail vessel indeed yet under favour you sit at the helm of it but I confess you cannot give me terms low and vile enough in comparison of your self who are of an infinitly more noble extraction the rational soul being Queen of forms and the bodie when she departs from it the gastliest and most noisom of things yet though you be a ray of Divinitie and I but a rag of mortalitie though you bear God Almighties image I but Adams though you be in me as a Diamond set in Horn though you be by a mysterious heavenly infusion and I by a seminarie traduction yet we have the same Creator as Ants and Angels have his hands have made me and fashioned me in the womb and the holy Text tells me that I am wonderfully made Nature his subordinate minister took much pains about me she used great deliberation in the business for the passed four several successive acts before I was compleated First there was a conjunction and cooperation of the sexes which among some require divers years before the work take effect as the present King of France was two and twentie years a getting and the last Prince of Conde thirteen moneths in the womb Secondly Then followed Conception which required a well tempered vessel to conserve the generative sperm by occlusion and constringement of the orifice of the Matrix which sperm being first bloud and afterwards cream was by a gentle ebullition coagulated into a cruddie lump which the womb by its natural heat made fit to receive form and to be organized whereupon Nature fell a working to delineate all the members and other parts beginning with those that are most noble as the heart the brain and the liver whereof the Galenists would have the liver to be first framed in regard it is the source and shop of bloud but the Peripatetiques held the heart to have the precedencie because it is the first thing that lives and the last that dies Thirdly Nature continued in this operation until a perfect shape was introduced which was the third Act and is called Formation being nought else but a production of an organical shapen bodie out of the spermatical substance caused by the plastick virtue and vigour of the vital spirits nor can I tell whether this Act was finished in thirtie fiftie fourtie two or fourtie five days after the Conception for the Naturalists allow such varietie of times according to the disposition of the matter before the Embrion be formed moreover they observe that Nature proceeds with those deliberate pawses that fourtie days after the Conception the creature is no bigger than a grain of wheat Fourthly This being done I was wrapped in three tunicles or membranes then I was animated with three souls the first with that of Plants called the vegetative soul then with a sensitive wherein I communicate with brute animals and lastly with
the rational soul was immitted The two first were generated ex Radice as the Philosophers term it viz. from the seeds of the Parents but the last which is your self was by immediate infusion from God himself though neither Naturallists nor Divines have yet positively determined when this Infusion is made Nor could ever any Anatomists by their curious dissections and inspections find yet any organ in the bodie or crannie and receptacle in the brain or any distinct place differing from other Animals where this rationall soul should reside in the Humane body Thus hath man an intellectuall soul he knows not where and infused he knows not how nor when so ignorant he is of the manner of his Creation This last Act is call'd Animation and as the Physicians allow Animation double the time that Formation had which sometimes happeneth in eight moneths sometimes in ten but most commonly in nine By these degrees and pauses was I made and casting off my secundine I came into the world to be a domicile not a dungeon for you to be a kind of ark to carry you to the port of Bliss to be a tabernacle for you nay to be a Temple for the Holy Ghost to dwell in Nor did Nature altogether play the Bungler in doing her work for she was pia Mater a Pious Mother in framing the cells of my brain and though she set me forth in no great volume yet by this slenderness gracilitie of constitution I have the advantage to carry less corruption about me for the more flesh the more corruption Now touching those fraylties you speak of whereunto I am subject you know they accompanied me to the world and that I derive them from the protoplast from the loins of my Gransire Adam the rust and canker of whose skin and sin stick unto me being moulded of the same matter Soul 'T is true that you are moulded of Earth as Adam was but the earth it self which gave him his composition and denomination did blush when she went to make him fore-seeing as it were his infirmities and propensity to all ill But I find by this reply of yours that you are well acquainted with your self by the account you give me of the method that Nature used in your Generation Now self-acquaintance is after the knowledge of the Creator the wisest it is one of the paths though a slabbie one that leads us to the high road towards heaven which is a rougher way than that you found ore the Alps and Pyrenean mountains The speculations whereof would make you truely value and vilifie your self it should prick those tumours and timpanies of pride that use to rise up in the humane creature when he contemplates how near that vessel wherein he slept so long in the bosom of his causes is to the excrementitious parts Now out of your discourse may be inferred that Man is that great Amphibion of Nature he passeth through the degrees of all creations He was first but meer Matter then he grew up to be a Vegetall afterwards a sensitive then a Human Creature in which condition he is capable of a regeneration and he is to be at last a Spirit good or bad Now you have two things that distinguish and specificat you from the first three the one is outward which is that erect upright Posture and shape you bear to behold Heaven your last and indeed your onely true Countrey this being but a transitory passage to that whereas your other fellow Cretures have their faces looking upon the earth The 2 is inward viz. the faculty of Reson which makes you a compensation for some inconveniences and weaknesses whereby you are inferior to other elementary Creatures By Reason man tames the Libian Lion he puts Castles upon the Elephants back makes the huge Camel to kneel and take up his burden by Reason he fetches the Eagle out of the Air and with his Harping-iron draggs up the great Leviathan out of the deeps by Reason he rules and curbs Nature her self making her pliable to his ends Now all the operations of Reason which are the best of human acts you derive from me But whereas you say that there can be no particular place found out either within you or without you more than there is in the Sensitive Creature where I should reside you must know that as the Solar Light displayeth it self throughout the whole Hemisphere yet it cannot be said to possess any place more than another so I being a beam of immortality am diffused through that little World of yours to quicken and heat all parts yet I confine my self to no peculiar cell and this inorganitie sheweth that I can live separat from you though you by no means without me as appears already by some functions that I exercise and those abstracted speculations that I use without the help or concurrence of matter and quantitie which are my instruments onely in ordine ad sensibilia not Intelligibilia yet I let you know that I have some closets in that Fabrick of yours more choice than others I am radically in the heart where the vital spirits have their residence where the arterial and most illustrious bloud doth run in the left ventricle But I am principally in the brain where the animal Spirits inhabit and whereon I cast my intellectual influences for Discourse and Reason which influences the brain of a brute animal is not capable of or adapted by Nature to receive Moreover the veins are branched up down the body the bloud is in the veins the spirits in the bloud and I am much in the spirits By this intimacie of communication I am polluted daily more and more I am infected hereby and leprified with sin and I fear me that as the wounds of my Saviour appeared upon his bodie after his Resurrection so those gashes and black spots which I have received from you will appear upon me after my separation And whereas you alledge that you are liable to future punishment as well as I for the aberrations and transgressions of this life I must tell you that when after my devorcement from you I become a spirit a simple substance and a sphere of my self the sharpness and activity the simpleness subtility of my pain being purely spiritual will be farr more grievous and cruciatory than any those gross members of yours can be capable of I shall endure all torments at once with certain knowledge of a succeeding perpetuity without any hopes of the least discontinuance or relaxation Furthermore whereas you say that I sit in the box to guide and govern that chariot of yours t is true I do so but as the divine Philosopher said that chariot of the body is led by two horses the one black the other white this last which are your good inclinations I can easily rule but the black one which are your turbulent wild passions and and obliquities I cannot govern so that I am afraid he is oftentimes so
being the weaker vessel but in him who was the stronger Now the tryal of mans universal Obedience being intended in him and he failing the guilt thereof falls upon his Posteritie that were all then potentially in his loins who ever since have brought with them into the world the stains of that original Corruption which yet Christians have a way to wash off in the Font of Baptism the lavoir of Regeneration yet there is an Eve lurking still within the humane body viz. the Will which is so full of obliquities and fraylties that while I lie at close ward against one infirmitie another is ready to wound me which makes me so great a sinner that the Indulgences of a whole Jubile had they such a virtue as some believe they have were not able to absolve me Moreover whereas you averr the Stars to bear sway and to have an incontroulable predominance over all sublunary Cretures and consequently over that body of yours It is a truth that cannot be denied as we find by daily experience that all Elementary Cretures depend upon the motion and virtue of the heavenly but though these influxes from above do by their operation toss and tumble the humors as they lift and work upon corporeal things in man yet notwithstanding it cannot be said that these operations do extend to those inclinations and actions that depend immediately upon the Empire of the Will with the other faculties and Powers of the Mind which are immanent and meerly spiritual yet I confess if we observe the order and method that the Understanding and the Will do use in the production of their functions it will be found that the influence of the Celestial Luminaries and the impressions that they make must have something to do herein but it is indirectly and accidently in regard that all terrestrial bodies by a gradual kind of subordination being govern'd as was said before by the superior it must be inferred of necessitie that whatsoever is natural in the humane Creture as the organs of that body of yours must feel the Power of their influences In regard that the spiritual faculties are so united and have such an entercourse with the corporeal organs that they cannot operate unless the said organs ministerially concur and contribute thereunto by presenting the objects which are the sensible species but I except the abstracted ideas and speculations of the Mind whence it inevitably comes to pass that in regard of this strict league and natural correspondence which is between them the inward faculties partake somewhat of and submits to the dominion that the Planets and Constellations have over the sensual appetite which together with the will are disposed often and incited I will not say constrained by their influxes Out of these premisses this conclusion doth follow that the Stars do operate and make impressions upon the humane creture as well as other productions of the Elements both outwardly and inwardly but they serve themselves of those material parts and organs of yours that are as portholes to let in the influxes which they dart from above to work upon the faculties to incline and incite them to good or ill according to their dispositions though not by way of enforcement for they have not such a tyrannical and absolute supremacie but there is a freedom still left to a well-ordered Will And as there are outward Bongraces to preserve the face from being tanned by the violence of Solar heat so there are intern Graces to keep the inward parts from all ill and malignant influences that are lanced from above according to the Poet Sapiens dominabitur Astris The Wise man sways ore the Stars Therefore it was a very pertinent answer that one gave to a Genethliacal Astrologer who having taken much pains to prie into the horoscope for the calculating of his Nativitie and telling the partie that in regard such and such stars were in conjunction at the hour of his Birth therefore he must be subject to such and such ill humours and dispositions 'T is true said he that I was born such a one but I was born again meaning his spiritual regeneration For as we find that a virtuous education doth oftentimes correct the infirmities and rectifie the obliquities of nature so there be interior motions of Grace which come from a higher power than the Stars that curb and check the operations which proceed from the supern influxes Yet are the intellectual powers easily inclined to be transported and snatched away by the sensual appetit and the natural allurements thereof for the humane soul is not sui juris she is not so independent and absolut of her self but that she may be said to depend upon the Totum compositum upon the bodie in general by the mediation of whose instruments she imploys her faculties end exerciseth her actions in order to sensible things But as the stars in this firmament are whirled away by the over-ruling motion of the Primum mobile the first mover from East to West yet they have a particular and contrarie motion of their own from West to East wherein they proceed notwithstanding in a constant interrupted pace so I may be said to be oftentimes whirld away by the irregular and violent motions of that Compositum that fleshly sphere of yours yet I go on still in my own motion towards my last goal and my sovereign good Now whereas the Heavens work on inferior bodies by three instruments viz. by Light Motion and Influence the first ingendering heat in the Ayr by attrition and rarefaction which is done by a simple or compounded ray to wit reflection The second by measuring our times and seasons both which may be said to be external visible instruments The third which is influence is a hidden intern qualitie it produceth metals causeth fluxes and refluxes ripens the Embrion in the womb with such like effects and as it was discoursed before it operates in the human creture upon his very intellectuals through the exterior material parts yet not by way of compulsion but inclination as was said before therefore the influxes of Heaven are no excuse for you as you alledg because they are resistable Lastly touching the Malus genius an ill spirit which you say doth haunt you and is ever at your elbow to push you forward to ill actions and suggest into you bad conceptions I must tel you there is also a Bonus genius or daemon a good spirit that always attends you whose infusions precepts and cautions if you would obey you would not onely see the best and approve of it but follow and put it in practise Bodie This discourse doth administer me but small comfort yet I thank you that you make me know my self better by displaying unto me my own condition and that magazin of infirmities which are stored up in this little tabernacle of yours yet I shall never make those infirmities nor all the effects thereof were they more in number greater than my Creators
c. The Roman Catholicks though they Invoke Saints and pray for the dead c. All these with sundrie sorts of Christians besides all the while they have the Symbole of saving Faith and same Apostolical Creed with me all the while they have the Decalog and holy Scriptures I have so much Charitie to hold that they differ from me not as much in Religion as in Opinion Now Opinion is that great Ladie which sways the World therefore I wish that they might go up the same scale of bliss with me Nor are the Swiâ—s and Gritons to be hated because they permit the Lutheran to preach in one end of the Church and the Calvinist in the other yet in theiâ— moral civilities and negotiations they live peaceably together To conclude this discours touching common Charitie and Love 't is tru my Fellow-cretures my Kindred and Friends have a great share of it but I reserve the quintessence thereof for my Creator and Saviour the one being the sea the other the spring of all felicitie I love my Creator a thousand degrees more than I fear him which makes me praise him more often than pray unto him and for matter of fear as I displayed my self elsewhere I fear none more than my self who am indeed my greatest foe I mean those obliquities and depravations which are my inmates whereof the ill spirit takes his advantage ever and anon to make me run into aberrations so that I may say I stand more in fear of my self than of the devil or death who is the king of fears Now touching this Elixer of love that I reserve for my Creator it melted one morning into these Stanzas As the parchd field doth thirst for rain When the Dog-star makes Sheep and Swain Of an unusual drowth coplain So thirsts my heart for Thee As the chac'd deer doth pant and bray After some brook or cooling bay When hounds have worried her astray So pants my heart for Thee As the forsaken Dove doth mone When her beloved mate is gone And never rests while self-alone So mones my heart for Thee Or as the teeming Earth doth mourn In black like Lover at an urn Till Titan's quickning beams return So do I mourn mone pant thirst For Thee who art my last and first Soul I am glad beyond measure to hear these discourses drop from you first that you make so good use of the objects of this Inferior world as to study your Creator in them proceeding from the effects to the search of the cause which is the method of Philosophy whereas the Theolog proceeds commonly from the cause to the effect The Pagan Philosophers by the twilight of nature soard so high that they came to discover there was a primus Motor an Ensentium an optimus maximus they came to know that he was ubiquitary and diffus'd through the Universs to give vigor life and motion to all parts as I do in that bodie of yours though invisibly if I may be so bold as assimilat so incomprehensible a greatness to so small a thing Now there is no finit intellect can form a quidditative apprehension of God no not the Angels themselves There may be negative conceptions of him as to say he is immortal immense independent simple and infinit c. Or there may be relative conceptions had of him as when we call him Creator Governor King c. Or there may be positive conceptions of him as the chiefest Good a pure Act or he may be described by an aggregation of Attributs as Mercifull Wise Pious c. But for the comprehensive quidditie of God it cannot be understood by any created Power Among all these one of the best wayes to describe him is by Abstracts as to call him goodness it self Justice it self Power Pity Piety it self He being the rule of all these some of those ancient Wisards among the Egyptians and Grecians came by reach of natural resons to the knowledge of one Incomprehensible Guide and conserver of the Univers specially Tresmegistus and Socrates but they durst not broach their opinions publiquely for fear of the fury of the Peeple among whom there was a kind of zeal in those dark times Plato flew as high as Socrates his Master in Divinitie and among other Passages throughout his Works there is one that is very pregnant for Writing to a friend of his he saith When I write to thee seriously I begin my Epistle with God save thee when otherwise The Gods save thee Aristotle Plato's scholler courted Nature onely groping her secrets a great Philosopher he was and no less a Sophister he was the first that entangled Philosophy with subtilties coin'd words and Paralogisms as the Classicans did first distract divinitie so that it was no improper Character which one gave That Aristotles school was a great skold Touching the celestial bodies I love you the better that you are affected with them so much that you sometimes speculat and spel your Creator among the stars Now some of the Rabbins hold that the word Iehovah which is the highest name of God Almightie and pronounced publickly in the Synagog but once a year may be plainly made up among the Oriental stars Nay they affirm that all the Hebrew letters may be found in the firmament which letters were the true characters of the constellations before the Egyptians came with their Hieroglyphicks that the Greeks hois'd up such monsters so near the throne of God as Bears Bulls Lions Goats Rams and Scorpions together with pitchers and planks of rotten wood They hold moreover that the fate and periods of Monarchies may be read not onely in Comets but in those fixd stars that are vertical over them When Medusa's head was vertical to Greece there were divers that presaged her destruction Ierusalem's ruin was read plainly among the stars some years before Nay Postel a Christian writer takes God and Christ to witness that in the Hebrew characters among the stars vidit omnia quae in Rerum natura constituta sunt he saw all things that were constituted by nature Doubtless that toung which was spoken in Paradise and by the Almightie himself may have some extraordinarie priviledge and mysteries in it nor was Postel lunatic when he broke out into such a protestation But the Authors of this opinion add unto it this caution that he who will be a schollar and a proficient in this sydereal school to spel the stars and studie this book for the Heavens are calld so in holy Scriptures must be an extraordinarie pious patient and prudent wel-wisd man so he may find old Orpheus words to be tru when speaking of God he sings {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} Thy certain order doth run immutable commands aong the starrs Now touching those ancient notaries of Nature it may be well thought those large Ideas of knowledge they had were illuminations from Heven whence every good and perfect gift
in glory and consequently the creatures that are within them Now they who please themselfs in this fancy adhere to their opinion who think that every Star in heaven is peepled with som kind of creatures which God Almighty hath pleased to place there for his honour and service it standing not with his providence that the concavities of those vast bodies whereof some are computed to be many hundred of times bigger then the globe of the earth should be empty and void therefore these Theorists frame a kind of scale of of creatures they place the Elementary lowermost as the most gross The Selenites or Lunary peeple are of a finer composition then they and as one Star exceeds one another in height and glory the creatures that are coloniz'd within them do so accordingly but the most immateriall the purest and the most intellectuall are seated in the Sphere of the Sun where the Almighty hath setled his Throne and they are his nearest attendants The Elementary Creatures have more matter then form The Solar have more form then matter the Inhabitants of the Moon with other Astraean colonies are of a mix'd nature and the nearer they approach the body of the Sun who is the fountaine of light and heat and the glorious Eye of the world the more pure and spirituall they are Soul All this is but fancy which although somthing of illumination and sublimity may bee in it yet there is allo an extravagance in the Idea nor is it any way consonant to the orthodoxal Faith therfore never fear that by assumption of any other I shall ever quite abandon that body of yours but I shall reserve not only an aptitude but a willingness to have you for my tabernacle again and to bee recompact I shall be desirous to be a soul again till when I shall be only a Spirit but that bulk of yours shall be refin'd and sublimated to the perfection of Celestiall matter which is the purest and most quintescentiall part of the whole body of matter It is the Region wherein we shall go in equal pace with eternity it self therefore as man while he sojournes among the Elements bears a body sutable congruous and sympathetique to them so when he is exalted and made free Citizen of the Heavenly Jerusalem which is the true Country for which he had a being he shall be purified and adâ—pted to the temper of it wherein man shall not only return to his first state of perfection but to a far higher and greater exaltation of glory the {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} shall be no more {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} the Body shâ—ll be no more a Sepulcher which may be the Etymology of it here but it shall becom a perpetuall Temple for the Holy Ghost There his understanding shall not be subject to error nor his will to passion incertitudes and topiques shall be turn'd to de monstrations Faith to intuition provided that he prepare himself accordingly and in this School of nature make himself capable to remove thither provided that he make use of those means which his Creator hath prescrib'd him here and that he employ his thoughts words and actions to that end for man shall have degrees of happiness in Heaven according to his works though not for his works which makes me reflect upon a passage that happen'd in the reigne of Edilred one of our Saxon Kings who having chang'd his Crown for a Friers coule and his Court for a Cloyster went to visit a Favorit of his that had bin a licentious young man who telling the King that a vision had appear'd unto him the night before of two youths which hee had seen one at his beds head with a white book thinne written the other at his beds feet with a large black book blurr'd and very thick written The King answered that the meaning of this vision was that the little book contained all his good works the other his bad yet God was so infinitely mercifull that one good work would cover a multitude of bad ones for hee never desir'd or absolutely design'd any Creature of his for damnation c. Body Yet ther want not now adaies such busie and profane spirits who rushing into his secret Councels do affirm that he hath by his determinat will preordain'd such and such creatures will they nill they for perdition an opinion then which we cannot conceive worse of the Devill himself But my dear soul you solace me beyond imagination that you tell me I shall bee reunited unto you made fit to share of your future beatitude yet this under correction is a hard thing for humane capacity to apprehend that the very same entire body should bee found out and recompacted after such putrefactions after so many changes and revolutions where can all the splinters of a bone which a Cannon bullet hath shiver'd and shatter'd to pieces bee found again where can all the atomes which a corrasive hath eaten from our limbs bee found what cohaerence what rejoinder is ther ever like to bee between a leg lost in Turkey and an arm lost in India The Shark and other ravenous fish of the Sea the Tyger the Bear the Crocodile with other savage beasts of the land use to devoure to disgest and turn to chylus and so to blood the bodies of thousands of men and that blood goes to the generation of other such brute annimals the wormes do the like in the grave Burnt bodies are resolv'd into ashes those ashes are blown into the gutter that puddled water is carried by common-shores into rivers those rivers pay tribute to the vast Ocean which runs in and retreats by so many ebbings and flowings how can it enter into the brain of man that all the parts of these bodies can be retreev'd to make up the same Compositum again Soul I know that the most searching and sagacious wits that ever were were all at a loss when they meditated on this transcendent mystery nor can the common principles of philosophy herein be preserved by any strength of Reson for they are bones that Nature cannot disgest But as I told you before in the scanning of divine mysteries we must oftentimes inferr certainties out of impossibilities as also that God is omnipotent otherwise it were not just for him to require such beliefs at our hands Moreover to illustrat unto you a little this article of the Resurrection you must understand that as at the Creation ther was a separation of the Chaos that huge indigested lump which went to the making of all cretures so after the last fire hath reduc'd all to their first principles and calcin'd them to ashes ther shall be a separation of that confus'd mass of ashes by the same all powerfull hand ther shall be a kind of second creation and rallying of the individuall bodies which were formed at first and every soul shall enjoy her first consort though much more purified then it was