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
lickering my boots already to that purpose but that which is father'd upon Paul the third is beyond all these when he said upon his death bed that shortly he should be resolved of two things whether ther be a God and Devil or whether ther were a Heaven and Hell Therefore Earth may be said to be worse then Hell in one respect because it bear's Atheists which Hell doth not but rather converts them in regard they feel God ther by his judgments and begin to have an historicall faith of him which here they had not Nor am I of that drowsie opinion to think that I shall sleep all the while among the common mass of souls in som receptacles ordain'd I know not where for that purpose till I be rejoyn'd unto you Nor doth the Religion I am of admit of any suburbs in hell as purgatory and other places where I must be purified some yeers before I ascend to heaven As Fray Iulian of Alcala doth averr upon record which is made authentique producing other spectators besides himself that he visibly saw the soul of Philip the second going up to Heaven in two ruddy clouds some two yeers after his death at such an hour of the night Body Let not my Soul bee offended if I bee curious to know somthing touching that most comfortable point of the immortality of the Soul and this curiosity doth not arise out of any doubt but a desire to be further confirm'd therein because there be some busie Spirits that stumble at it alledging that it is but a new tenet of Christian Faith not establish'd in the Church till the latter Lateran Councell and pumping out other quaeres and cavils concerning this Article Soul It is in Divinity as in Philosophy for as it was said long since that in this an impertinent Sceptic may blurt out a question which all the Sages of Greece were they alive could not answer So in Divinity an irresolute inconformable stubborn spirit may raise doubts that the whole Academy of Christian learning cannot solve such Pyrrhonians and perverse spirits have bin in all Ages ther are no principles can tie them their braines may bee said to bee like a skein of thrumb'd small threed any thing will entangle them and their thoughts like a bush of thornes that takes hold of any thing they are never satisfied either in points of faith or the operations of nature like him who would have found somthing to shear off upon an egge This may be cal'd one of the truest sorts of superstitions whose etymologie is super stare to stand too precisely and peremptorily upon a thing specially things indifferent and to bee over hot either in the abolition or maintenance of them to the destruction of whole Nations as also in recerches after supererogatory knowledg and interpretations of Scriptures wherby they would make the Holy Spirit speak what he never meant whereas the moderat and submiss sober minded he or she are the best proficients in the school of Divine knowledg But wheras you say that you desire to be strengthned and illuminated further touching the imateriality and consequently the incorruptibleness and immortality of the Rational Soul Let me tell you that not only Christian Divines but the best of Pagan writers both Poets Philosophers and Orators have done Her that right One calls Her Divinae particulam aurae Another sings Igneus est olli vigor coelestis imago Another Mens infusa Deo mortalis nescia sortis And Cicero among other hath a remarkable saying to this purpose si erro credendo Animam esse Immortalem libenter erro If I err in beleeving the soul to be immortall I willingly erre Moreover the Intellectuall humane soul doth prove Her self to be immortall both by her desires her apprehensions and operations Her desires are infinit and still longing after eternity now ther is no naturall passion given to any finit Creture to bee frustraneous Her apprehending of notions of Eternall truth which are her chiefest employment and most adaequat objects declare her immortall Al corruption comes from matter and from the clashing of contraries now when the soul is sever'd from the body she is beyond the sphere of matter therefore no causes of mortality can reach her ther is nothing in her that can tend to a not being Her operations also pronounce her immortall which she doth exercise without the ministery of corporeall organs for they are rather a clogg to Her she doth use to spiritualize materiall things in the understanding to abstract ideas from all Individuals she is an engin that can apprehend negations and privations she can frame collective notions all which conclude her immateriality and where no matter is found ther 's no corruption and wher ther is no corruptibleness ther must be an immortality now her prime operations being without any concurrence of matter she may be concluded immortall by that common principle Modus operandi sequitur modum essendi for in the world to come the state of the soul shall be a state of pure Being nor will ther be either action or passion in that state whence may be inferr'd she shall never perish in regard that all corruption comes from the action of another thing upon that which is corruptible therfore that thing must be capable of being made better or worse now if a separate soul be in her utmost final estate that she can be made neither it follows she can never lose the being she hath Moreover since the egress out of the body doth not alter her Nature but only her condition it must be granted that she was of the same nature while shee continued incorporated though in that imprisonment of hers she was subject to be forg'd as it were by the hammers of materiall objects beating upon her yet so as she was still of her self what she was Therfore when she goes out of the passible ore wherin she suffers by reason of the foulness and impurity of that ore she immediatly becomes impassible and a fix'd subject of her own nature that is a simple pure Being Both which states of the soul may be illustrated in som measure by what we find passeth in the coppelling of a fix'd mettall for as long as any lead or dross or any allay remains with it it continueth melting flowing and in motion under the muffle but as soon as they are parted from it and that it is become pure without mixture and single of it self it contracteth it self to a narrower room and at that instant ceaseth from all motion it grows hard permanent and resistent to all operations of the fire and admitteth no change or diminution in it 's subject by any extern violence so the Rational Soul when she departs from the drossy ore of the body and comes be her single self she becomes as it were exalted gold to be perfectly by her self she can never be liable any more to diminution to action passion or any kind of
THE VISION OR A Dialog between the Soul and the Bodie Fancied in a Morning-Dream Svmbolum Auth. Senesco non segnesco LONDON Printed for William Hope at the Blue â—â—chor on the North side of the Royaâ— Exchange Anno Dom. 1651. To the knowing Reader MAn is the Worlds Abridgement who enrouls Within himself a Trinitie of souls He runs through all Creations by degrees First he is onely Matter on the lees Whence he proceeds to be a Vegetal Next Sensitive and so Organical Then by Divine infusion a third soul The Rational doth the two first controul But when this soul comes in and where she dwels Distinct from others no Dissector tells And which no creture else can say that state Enables her to be Regenerate She then becomes a Spirit and at last A Devil or a Saint when she hath cast That clog of flesh which yet she takes again To perfect her beatitude or pain Thus Man is first or last allied to all Cretures in Heven Earth or Hells blackhall This Vision may conduce to let us know Our present baseness and our future bliss If it make any gentle souls to glow And mend their pace that way I have my wish JAM HOVVELL TO The Right Honourable the Ladie ELISABETH DIGBYE c. Madame COuld the Rational soul whom Philosophy calls the Queen of forms and Divinity the Image of the Allmighty be seen by the outward eye of sense she would as Plato sometimes spoke of Virtue were she so visible rayse in us a world of admiration We should be so ravish'd with her beauty and so struck in love that we would leave all things else to win her favour An odd Humorist vapouring once that Women had no souls was answered by a modest Lady 〈◊〉 Sir you are deceiv'd for I can pâ—â—duce a good Text to the contrary My soul doth magnifie the Lord and it was a woman that spoke it No less humorous was He who would maintain that the salique Law was in force in Heaven as well as in France which excluded women from raigning But much more civil was a farewell that the Count of Lemos took of the Dutchess of Pastrana who having invited him to see a new Palace that she had built with a stately Chappell annex'd at his departure said Madam I see your body is fairly Housd but I find that your soul is far better Housd than your Body Madam I have the happiness to know your L shp many years near upon 4. lifes in the law and truly I never knew any whose soul was better lodgd and furnishd with more virtues and graces which makes me resolv'd to live and die Your Lshps most humble and dutifull servant JAM HOVVELL The PROEM IT was about the Summer solstice when the Measurer of Time that glorious Luminarie of Heven allowed but little above three hours night to cover this part of the Hemisphere That after my sleep a second stole gently upon me which happend about the dawnings of the day when those grosser sort of soporiferous fumes that are wont to ascend from the stomack to lock up the outward senses for their natural repose being dissipated and spent the purest kind of subtil rarified vapours rise up to the Region of the brain which use to represent more plain and even objects to the Imagination and make the storie and circumstances of dreams more coherent and cleer though the â—ost lucid fancies that appear uâ—â—â—â—s in sleep be but as stars in a cloudie night or the branches of trees in a thick standing pool I say it was about the break of day that I had an unusual Dream or Vision rather For me thought a little airie or rather an aethereal kind of spark did hover up and down about my bodie It seemed to have a shape yet it had none but a kind of reflexion it was me thought within me and it was not but at such a distance and in that posture as if it lay Centinel At last I found it was my Soul which useth to make sollices in time of sleep and fetch vagaries abroad to practise how she can live apart after the dissolution when she is separated from the bodie and becomes a spirit Afterwards the fantasma varying she took a shape and the nearest resemblance I could make of it was to a veild Nunn with a flaming cross on the left side of her breast who in dolefull tones and thrâ—â—â—â—g accents broke out into these queâ—â—â—ous ejaculations A DIALOG between the SOUL and the BODIE Soul OMe how much reason have I to rue the time that ever I was cloistered up among those walls of clay What cause have I to repent that ever I was thrown into that dungeon that corrupt mass of flesh For when I first entered I bore the image of my Creatour in somâ— lustre but since that time 't is scarce discernable on me in regard of those soul leprous spots and taintures which I have contracted from those frail corporeal organs which have so pitifully disfigured and transformed me that I cannot be called the same Thing I was at first the Character of my Creatour being almost quite lost in me Bodie Dear Soul how comes it to pass that you are in so much anxietie how comes it that you are so discomposed and transported with passion imputing the cause of your indispositions to me Alas you know well that I am but an unwieldie lump of earth a meer passive thing of my self It is you that actuats and animats me otherwise I could neither think speak or do any thing nay without your impulss I could have no motion at all you are the Pilot that steers â—his frail Bark you fit in the box of the Chariot I am but the organ you are the breath you are the intelligence that governs and enlightens this dark orb of mine so that all my motions are derived from the poles of your commands it is you that denominates me a man therefore if any thing be amiss 't is I that have more reason to complain in regard that being but a meer unwieldie trunk of my self I am quickened altogether by you whether you be {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} a continual motion as some Philosophers would have you to be or {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} the perfection from whence all motion proceeds as others term you therefore because I am liable also to future punishment as well as you 't is I that have more cause of complaint and to repent me of that syneresis and union which is betwixt us For it had been less danger for me to have been an inanimate thing and to have had neither vegetal sensitive or rational Soul either by traduction or infusion cast into me for then I had been free from those numberless incommodities which all three are liable unto The First being subject to excess of moisture and drought to blastings and the furie of the Meteors The Second to hunger and thirst with multitudes of
headstrong furious that he will at last tumble us both down the precipice of destruction Lastly whereas you alledge that I sit at the stern of that leaking bark of yours t' is true I do so but I sayl in her as one passing upon some part of the Danubius where she meets with the River Sava and the two Rivers running in collaterall consortship many miles without intermingling the Boats that row along the stream have oftentimes on the one side a black muddie water and on the Danubs side a clear stream In this manner do I sail in that bodie of yours through good and bad affections through clear and turbid humours though the last be more predominant whence such vapours arise that cause strange tempests in me and disturb the calm of my mind which makes me wearie of this habitation when I think on those pollutions and black specks wherewith I am contaminated whereunto my meditations tended lately in these few Stanzas of multifarious cadences Lord I cry Lord I fly To thy Throne of grace This world is irksom unto me In my mind Stings I find Of that dismal place Where pains still growing young ne'r die O thou whose clemencie Reacheth to earth from skie Set my sins from me as wide As is East From the West Or the Court of bliss From the Infern abyss So far let us asunder ever bide Angels blest With the rest Of that Heavenly quire Which Halelujas always sing Fain would I Mount on high And those seats aspire Where every season is a constant spring O thou who thought'st no scorn To be in Bethlem born Though grand Monarch of the sky Through a floud Of thy bloud Let me safely dive And at that port arrive Where I may ever rest from shipwrack free Faith and Hope Take your scope And my Pilots be To waft me to this blisfull bay Gently guid Through the tide Of Mans miserie My Bark that it lose not the way When landed I shall be At that Port pardon me If I bid you both farewell Onely love Reigns above 'Mong celestial souls Where passion not controuls Nor any thing but Charity doth dwel Lord of light In thy sight Are those Mounts of bliss Which humane brains transcend so far Ear nor ey Can descry Nor heart fully wish Or toungs of men and saints declare Those sense-surmounting joys That free from all annoys For those few up-treasur'd lie Which ere sun Shone at noon Have their names enroll'd In characters of gold Through the white volums of Eternitie Bodie You are beholden to my frailties for this and such like Meditations who raise them in you as rusty steel useth to strike sparks of fire sin it self becomes an advantage to us somtimes nay mankind may be said to be beholden to the Iews and Iudas because they were the outward Instruments that wrought salvation for the Cross which they set upon mount â—alvarie for the crucifying of our Saviour was the first Christian Altar that ever was erected and it may be well doubted whether he that hates the Altar shall ever have benefit of the Sacrifice as one said But I am sorry to hear from you that your dwelling in me is so tedious unto you all that I can say is I could wish you were better hous'd Now touching those Passions and Affections you speak of which are also my Inmates they are to the soul as sayls to a ship they are also as so many gales to fill those sayls as so many breezes to blow this small Vessel of mine wherein you are embarked to the haven of happiness and as I said before they are meer Emanations from you for there is nothing of motion in me but what I derive from you Now touching Affections and Passions how uncoth would all human actions be unless they were sweetned by them how stupid and slumbering would our Spirits be without them What a dull thing were Generation if there were no Concupiscence What comfort would there be in educating children if there were not a natural love that affected us Charitie would grow key-cold if Pity did not heat her to action and that Souldier fights best who being in the field is possess'd with the Passion of anger which the Philosopher calls the Whetstone of fortitude He cannot becom a true Penitent that is not affecteÌ„ with sorrow nor a true Convert who is not affected with hatred of sin Touching other infirmities you charge me withall you know I have them by natural and hereditary propagation from my first Parents whose corruption was entail'd upon all mankind which may also excuse at least extenuat my faults But besides these Resons I have another that may serve for an Apologie in my behalf which is that all these members of mine and that mass of bloud which runs through them with the cestern of Humors as likewise all the cells of my brain are guided and governed by the motions of celestial bodies whose influxes do perpetually invade me and are irresistible Add hereunto that there is a malus Genius an ill Spirit that is always busie about me and ready to take all advantages to impel me to acts of weakness All these things being well considered and weigh'd in a just balance conclude me to be of my self but a poor passive thing and to act by the impulses of others Touching those Affections and Passions you speak of which are nought else but a conglobation of the Spirits I not onely allow but am glad of them they serve as wings to carry me up to heaven and you after me or as you say they are as so many gales to send me thither provided that the one do onely blow not bluster and raise tempests And that the other be not irregular or exorbitant but directed to their true Object The Passions are as so many pleaders wrangling at a bar and Reson my chiefest facultie should be their Chancelor But oftentimes those troops of furious Spirits which Passion musters up and sends up boyling to the brain are so violent that those Spirits which are under the jurisdiction of Reson are not able to encounter them though she unite all her forces to that purpose Moreover whereas you would pin your infirmities upon your first Parents 't is true that although Adam at first was created in a state of integrity and perfection being he was the Epitome of the Creation and a kind of Microcosm a little World of himself whereunto there may be some allusion in his name which comprehends the four corners of the World the word Adam being made up of {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} viz. East West North and South Although at first he was compleated to that state and yet made capable of a higher perfection which capacitie was no imperfection but a seale to a higher I say that although he was so accomplish'd to present happiness yet by the seducement of the ill Spirit he fatally fell from it nor was the fault as much in the Woman
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