and Des-Chartes may consist very well with this passage But as for Scaligers making use of Aristotles text to make good Athanasius his Creed I will be very fair with thee Phil. He did first beleeve firmly that there is such a Trinitie and then made Aristotle speak to that purpose Now do thou but first prove strongly thy Philosophicall positions by Reason and then I give thee leave for further countenance to call in Moses his text Observ. 4. Do you mention no life here Eugenius But then Georgius Venetus do's for you Omne quod vivit propter inclusum calorem vivit indè colligitur caloris naturam vim habere in se vitalem in mundo passim diffusam c. Construe it Phil. and be pacified Observ. 5. When you call it so in your own verse Why it seems then you had a mind to write poeticall Prose which I am sure Mr. Bust of Eaton had like to have whipt me for when I was a boy But I wonder how thou comest to stumble on this Stanza of mine above the rest Let us bring it all forth intire into view The last Extreme the farthest off from light That 's Natures deadly shadow Hyle's cell O horrid Cave and womb of dreaded Night Mother of witchcraft and accursed spell Which nothing can avail'gainst Israel No Magick can him hurt his portion Is not divided nature he doth dwell In light in holy love in union Not fast to this or that but free communion O! now I see the reason there is the word Magick named in it But tell me O Magicus do'st thou understand what I have writ there If thou didst as thou shouldst do and hadst an inward sense feeling of it thou wouldst make a bonefire of all thy books of curious Arts as the Magicians did in the Apostles time for joy of finding a better light But I cannot expresse what I mean better then I have already in that Stanza Page 40. lin. 20. Prethee Mastix what is this subject I 'le tell thee Nay Aristotle shall tell thee these are his words Phys. l. 1. c. ult. {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} Thou wilt not say that this is in nature neither {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} nor {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} as thou barbarously speakest And thou must give me leave to correct thy Greek when there is need as well as thou doest my English where there is no need Thy {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} is a monster and hath one {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} too much but I will not tread on this toe of thine too hard I passe off and come to thy head that I mean that should dwel there if there be any body within let them answer me Is not that defined there by Aristotle the sense whereof is sufficiently set out in my description of the Idea of the first matter Is it not in nature neither {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} nor {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} I appeal to thine own reason if thou canst any wayes shift it but that thou must conceive a matter variously changed into severall succeeding forms Therefore that which continues the same numericall substance though in its notion incomplete and sustains the succeeding form that is a thing in Nature But when we precisely conceive it utterly devoid of all forms that 's a separation made onely by the fire of our understanding {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} the Oracles call it not by your Chymicall fire and this is not in Nature but in our apprehension Whefore your assertion is false when you say that this matter is neither {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} nor {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} in Nature For though the notionall respect be not in Nature the thing it self is And this I say is a sober description and signifies something But your horrible empty darknesse which you say here is the first Matter doth but mock a mans fansie in the dark Page 42. line 15. The holy Spirit say you is not able to see c. I say Anthroposophus that it is you that have put things together so ill-favouredly as if you implied so much as the Reader may judge by perpending the ninth page of your Anthroposophia Page 43. line 20. As soon as God was Where is thy Logick Eugenius doth that imply there was a time when God was not when we say that one is as wise as a wisp does that imply the wisp is wise I tell thee a wisp is no wiser then thou art Mr. Magicus So if I say that the light of the Idea's was no later then the existence of God that saying does neither stint nor stretch out the duration of Gods existence but onely it coextends the light of the Idea's with that duration Page 44. line 1. But the water was not so But what was the horrible empty darknesse O thou man in the dark was that ab aeterno or not and if that was could not the Divine light shine in that darknesse but I will wrestle no longer with such Lemures in the dark as thy shifting fancie proves it self O Anthroposophus Let 's go on and see if we can get into the light Observ. 6. And speak of Rationes seminales Yes I spake of them and mov'd a very materiall question concerning them to wit what that Experiment in a glasse could do for the confirming or confuting the Rationes seminales It had been your duty here to have satisfied this Quaere but I perceive your inabilitie and pardon you Observ. 7. Line 10. I my self make the Naturall Idea no Idea at all So then Anthroposophus this is the storie There is a twofold Idea a divine Idea and an Idea which is no Idea at all Ha ha he Thou hadst abused me so unmercifully in this bitter book of thine that I thought I should never have been able to laugh again as long as I liv'd But this would make a dog burst his halter with laughing I must now laugh or die What art thou now turned Preacher Phil though no Puritane by no means and tel'st us of three kinds of Seekers that they are either those which are both Seekers and Finders or those that are Finders but no Seekers or lastly such as are neither Seekers nor Finders Certainly when thou wrotest this book thou hadst a plot to eternize thy fame and leave thy folly upon record Page 46. line 1. Cite him then and produce his words Here they are Philalethes {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} page 20. He there proves that there are divine Idea's before the creation of the visible plants from that text of Moses Gen. 2. v. 4 5. Philo's own words are these upon that text {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} sayes he {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} that is Does not he manifestly set before us incorporeall and
a vast difference in simply calling you Pander and calling you Pander to Madam Nature who a◠you confesse complains of your prostitutions A sworn enemy to reason Why Do you not pray against reason A logicâ liber a ◠Domine And I think any body would swear you are a reall enemy to that you pray against unlesse your devotions be but a mockery A shittle skull My words were Did your sculler or shittle skull I hope you do not think that I meant your skull was so flue and shallow that boyes might shittle it and make ducks and drakes on the water with it as they do with oyster-shels Or that your self was so Magicall that you could row to the crystall rock in it as witches are said to do on the seas in an egg-shell Excuse me Phil. I meant no such high mysteries It was onely a pittyfull dry clinch as light as a nut-shell something like that gingle of thine Nation and Indignation No good Christian In that place you bad us show you a good Christian and you would c. There I inferre that you being at all other times so ready to show your self and here you slinking back you were conscious to your self that you were no good Christian Otter and water-Rat I said onely that you did waddle on toward the river Usk like an Otter or water-Rat Will with the wisp and Meg with the Lanthorn I do not call you Will nor Meg but tell you If you walk by River sides and marish places you may well meet with such companions there as those to take a turn or two with you Tom-fool in a play Why is not your name Tom They tell me it is Tom Vaughan of Jesus Colledge in Oxford Well then Tom Do not you make your self an Actour in a play For these are your words I will now withdraw and leave the stage to the next Actour So here is Tom in the play But where is the fool say you Where is the wisest man say I. My self sayes Tom Vaughan I warrant you Why then say I Tom Vaughan is Tom fool in the play For the fool in the play is to be the wisest man according to the known proverb But how will you wipe off that aspersion of calling me naturall fool sayes wise Tom. That indeed I confesse impossible because it was never yet laid on I said onely if you had answered the Aristoteleans sic probo's with mere laughter you would have proved your self a naturall fool But he hath not done so nor is Tom Vaughan a naturall fool I dare swear for him He has too much naturall heat to be a naturall fool Blesse thee from madnesse Tom and all will be well But there is yet something else behind ' worse then all this That all these terms of incivilitie must proceed from spight and provocation And this you place betwixt the two bilious tumours you have raysed as a ductus communis or common chanel to convey the sharp malignant humour to swell them to the full It is true my words run thus That I have been very fair with you and though provoked c. But this was spoken in the person of an Aristotelean whom your scornfull usage of their Master Aristotle you may be sure did and does provoke But in good truth Philalethes you did not provoke me at all with your book unlesse to laugh at you for your Puerilities I but you have an argument for it that I was provoked viz. Because your Theomagicall discourse has so out-done or undone my Ballade of the Soul as you scornfully call it that my ignorance in the Platonick Philosophy has now appeared to the world O rem ridiculam Thou art a merry Greek indeed Philalethes and art set upon 't to make the world sport Thou dost then professe openly to all the world that thou hast so high a conceit of thy Anthroposophia that it may well dash me out of countenance with my Philosophicall Poems and that through envie I being thus wounded I should by my Alazonomastix endeavour for the ease of my grief to abate thy credit What a Suffenus art thou in the esteeming of thy own works O Eugenius and of what a pitifull spirit dost thou take Alazonomastix to be I do professe ex animo that I could heartily wish that my self were the greatest Ignaro in the world upon condition I were really no more ignorant then I am So little am I touched with precellency or out-stripping others But thou judgest me to have wrote out of the same intoxicating Principle that thou thy self hast that is vain glory Or however if there was any thing of that when I wrote those Poems which I thank God if any was very little yet long ago I praise that power that inabled me I brought it down to a degree far lesse then thy untamed Heat for the present can imagine possible But you 'll say This is a mysterie above all Magick What then was the Impulsive of writing against your book I have told you already but you are loth to believe me Mere enmity to immoralitie and foolery But if it were any thing that might respect my self it was onely this That you so carelessely and confidently adventuring upon the Platonick way with so much tainted heat and distemper that to my better composed spirit you seemed not a little disturbed in your phansie and your bloud to be too hot to be sufficiently rectified by your brain I thought it safe for me to keep those Books I wrote out of a spirit of sobernesse from reprochfull mistake For you pretending the same way that I seem to be in as in your bold and disadvantagious asserting The soul to pre-exist and to come into the bodie open-ey'd as it were that is full fraught with divine notions and making such out-ragiously distorted delineaments of that {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} as the Stoicks call it the enlivened Universe with sundry other passages of like grossnesse I was afraid that men judging that this affectation of Platonisme in you might well proceed from some intemperies of bloud and spirit and that there no body else besides us two dealing with these kinds of notions they might yoke me with so disordered a companion as your self Reasoning thus with themselves Vaughan of Jesus in Oxenford holds the pre-existencie of the Soul and other Platonick Paradoxes and we see what a pickle he is in What think you of More of Christ's that writ the Platonicall Poems Nay what think you of Platonisme it self Surely it is all but the fruit of juvenile distemper and intoxicating heat But I say it is the most noble and effectuall Engine to fetch up a mans mind to true virtue and holinesse next to the Bible that is extant in the world And that this may not suffer I have suffered my self to observe upon you what I have observed my young Engenius This is true my Friend to use your own phrase And that the world may know that I
and throughly understand them that you do so boldly pronounce them compleat and perfect I know Philalethes is not so immodest as to say so I am sure the world is not so foolishly credulous as to beleeve so So that I must conclude Eugenius that thou art so outragiously distempered in thy mind that thou art a weaker Arithmetician then the rude Thracians They told to foure Thou art out at three and must begin again Page 13. Lin. 11. How many more syllables in Anthroposophia then in Antipsychopannychia Not so many So that if I had affected to be so Magical as your learned self the same conceit would have fitted my Title-page But I begin now to suspect you are so nimble at comparing that your Title-page was a kind of Apish Imitation of mine in the first Edition of my Song of the Soul But wast thou so simple as to think that any bodie thought better of my book for those hard words in the Frontispiece of it I onely set them there as a wind-mill on a stack of corn by the clack of it to scare away sparrows and crows that it might be reserved entire for men But I perceive for all that that thy Rooks bill has been pecking there But much good may it do thee Phil. I envie it thee not Page 15. Lin. 20. Vim scrmonis esse in verbis c. I say the force and warrant both of Nouns and Verbs is from their use Quem penes arbitrium est jus norma loquendi But if you will have Oratour to be good and proper this Epistle of yours must then be no Epistle though you call it so but an Oration to the Fratres R. C. which you spoke to them when they were God knows where and they will answer you God knows when Verily Philalethes thou art a fine fellow to have made an Oratour of in King Midas his time For he had they say very long eares And so mightest Thou have made an Oration before the King in his absence Page 17. Line 21. A twofold Definition Accidentall and Essentiall That 's true Phil. what Freshman but knows that But how it is to be understood I perceive thou dost not know I am ashamed that I must be fain to rub up in thee the very first rudiments of Logick or rather teach thee them For couldst thou ever forget what is meant by Accidentall what by Essentiall Accidentall is that which may be or not be in a thing and yet the thing be As a horse may be a horse be it black or white Essentiall is that which so belongs to the thing to which it is said to be Essentiall that the thing cannot be conceiv'd to exist without it Now say I these faculties of Understanding Reason and Sense are essentiall to the soul of man because we cannot conceive a soul without a power or facultie of understanding reasoning c. And Aristotle has defined a soul from these Therefore would a Peripatetick say with an Essentiall Definition But Eugenius No This is but circumstantiall sayes he Therefore I do inferre Eugenius that thou dost dream of knowing the very naked substance of the soul which thou wilt as soon know as see the wind And thus I spoke to that that thou must needs mean if thou meanest any thing but it is a plain case thou dost not know thy own meaning But Aristotle doth sufficiently countenance mine with what he has verie luckily let fall some where in his Analyticks And thus is it manifestly true in that sense that you your self meant That the very essence of any substance is not to be known nor is there any such Essentiall Definition This is as true Tom. Vaughan as two and two are foure though I do not call you Owl for your ignorance as you do me for my knowledge But we shall have another bout again with this in your Anima Magica abscondita Page 19. to the 24. To have made the world as a Carpenter of stone and timber Thou hast misplaced a comma in the sentence to make a Cavil Put on thy spectacles and see if there be any comma before of in my Book If you understood common sense you could not but understand that my meaning is this That you tax the Peripateticks for phansying God to have made the world as a Carpenter makes houses of stone and timber Now pitifull Caviller But to the point I say this is a false taxation Eugenius For the parts of the world according to the Peripateticks own doctrine are set in this order they are from an inward principle of motion and their own proper qualities so that they do as the stones and trees are said to have done at the musick of Orphevs and Amphion move of themselves But the stone and timber in the work of a Carpenter do not move themselves into their places they ought to be for the building up of an house But you answer two things to this First that the parts of the world do not move themselves Secondly that if they do then they have infusion of life To the first Why dos not any part of the earth move it self downward if it be in an higher place then is naturall to it and the aire and fire upward c. and this from an inward principle of motion Nay is not the very definition of Nature Principium motûs quietis c. wherefore we see plainly that according to the Aristoteleans all to the very concave of the Moon have an inward principle of motion And for the Heavens themselves the most sober and cautious of the Peripateticks hold them to be moved from an inward Principle their Forma informans as they call it So that though they do not allow life infused into the world yet they allow an inward principle of motion in natural bodies which is their Substantiall Forms by vertue whereof they are ranged in this order as we see or at least according to which they are thus ranged and ordered And this is not so dead a businesse as the Carpenters building with stone and timber But in the second place you say That if they have this motion from an inward principle then they have also infusion of life But do not you see plainly that according to the mind of the more sober Peripateticks they have motion from an inward principle Therefore you should have been so far from taxing them to look upon God as a Carpenter that you should have concluded rather that they held infusion of life Page 24. Lin. I. Thou hast abused me basely Verily if that were true I shonld be very sorrie for it For I would not willingly abuse any man living of what condition soever But the thing has happened unluckily I read thy Book I knew not thy person nor thy name nor thy nature further then it was exprest in thy Book which did not represent it so ill as now I find it If I had thought my Galenical purge had met with
such a constitution I should have tempered it more carefully For I delight not in the vexation of any man The truth is my scope in writing that Book was laudable and honest and such as might become a very good Christian and my mirth and pleasantnesse of mind much and reall but the sharpnesse of my style personated and Aristotelicall and therefore being but affected and fictitious I felt it not there was no corrosion at all but all that was unkind in it if you will call that passion unkindnesse was a certain light indignation that I bore and ever do bear against magnificent folly And there being no name to your Book I thought I had the opportunity of doing it with the least offence as meeting with the thing disjoyned and singled from the person But I verily think I should not have medled at all if you had spared your incivilities to Des-Chartes whose worth and skill in naturall Philosophy be it fate or judgement that constrains me to it let the world judge I can not but honour and admire He is rayled at but not confuted by any that I see in his naturall Philosophy and that 's the thing I magnifie him for Though his Metaphysicks have wit and strength enough too and he hath made them good against his opposers Line 21. And assure thy self I will persecute thee so long as there is ink or paper in England Assuredly thou wilt not Philalethes For why I am dead already taken in thy trap and tortured to death will not this suffice thee I am dead and thou thy self but mortall wilt thou entertain immortall enmity against me But how canst thou persecute me being dead Wilt thou raise my soul up O Magicus by thy Necromancy and then combate with me over my grave I hope thou art but in jest Eugenius If thou beest not I must tell thee in good earnest thy present bitternesse will make thee Simon Magus like as well as thy former boasting O thou confounded and undone thing how hast thou shamed thy self Thy vizard is fallen off and thy sanctimonious clothing torn from about thee even as it was with the Apes and Monkies that being attired like men and wearing vizards over their faces did daunce and cringe and kisse and do all the gestures of men so artificially and becomingly that the Countrey people took them to be a lesser size of humane race till a waggish fellow that had more with then the rest dropt a few nuts amongst them for which they fell a scrambling so earnestly that they tore off their vizards and to the great laughter of the spectatours show'd what manner of creatures they were O Magicus do not dissemble before me For thou dost not know with what eyes I behold thee Were it not better for thee and all the world beside to make it their businesse to be really and fully possest of those things that are undoubtedly good and Christian nay indeed if they be had in the right Principle are the very buds and branches of the tree of Paradise the limbs and members of the Divine nature such as are meeknesse patience and humility discretion freedome from self-interest chastity temperance equity and the like is it not better to seek after these things then to strain at high words and uncertain flatuous notions that do but puff up the mind and make it seem full to it self when it is distended with nothing but unwholsome wind Is not this very true my dear Philatethes Line II. Upon certain similitudes and analogies of mine Now we are come to that rare piece of Zoography of thine the world drawn out in the shape of an Animal But let 's view the whole draught as it lies in your book because you make such a foul noise about it in your answer Your words are these Besides the texture of the Universe clearly discovers its Animation The Earth which is the visible naturall Basis of it represents the grosse carnall parts The element of the water answers to the bloud for in it the pulse of the great world beats this most men call the flux and reflux but they know not the true cause of it The air is the outward refreshing spirit where this vast creature breathes though invisibly yet not insensibly The interstellar skies are his vitall ethereall waters and the starres his animall sensuall fire Now to passe my censure on this rare Zoographicall peice I tell thee if thy brains were so confusedly scattered as thy phansie is here thou wert a dead man Philalethes all the Chymistry in the world could not recover thee Thou art so unitive a soul Phil. and such a clicker at the slightest shadows of similitude that thou wouldst not stick to match chalk and cheese together I perceive and mussitate a marriage betwixt an Apple and an Oyster Even those proverbiall dissimilitudes have something of similitude in them will you then take them for similes that have so monstrous a disproportion and dissimilitude But you are such a Sophister that you can make any thing good Let 's try The Earth must represent the flesh because they both be grosse so is chalk and cheese or an Apple and an Oyster But what think you of the Moon is not that as much green cheese as the Earth is flesh what think you of Venus of Mercury and the rest of the Planets which they that know any thing in Nature know to be as much flesh as the Earth is that is to be dark opake as well as shee What! is this flesh of the world then torn apeices and thrown about scattered here and there like the disjoynted limbs of dragg'd Hippolytus Go to Phil where are you now with your fine knacks and similitudes But to the next Analogie The element of water answers to the bloud Why For in it is the pulse of the great world But didst thou ever feel the pulse of the Moon And yet is not there water too thou little sleepy heedlesse Endymion The bloud is restagnant there I warrant you and hath no pulse So that the man with the thorns on his back lives in a very unwholesome region But to keep to our own station here upon Earth Dost thou know what thou sayest when thou venturest to name that monosyllable Pulse dost thou know the causes and the laws of it Tell me my little Philosophaster where is there in the earth or out of the earth in this World-Animal of thine that which will answer to the heart and the systole and diastole thereof to make this pulse And beside this There is wanting rarefaction and universall diffusion of the stroke at once These are in the pulse of a true Animal but are not to be found in the Flux of the sea For it is not in all places at once nor is the water rarefied where it is Now my pretty Parabolist what is there left to make your similitude good for a pulse in your great Animal more then when you spill your