full Dimensions as Nature can give her none more advantagious the same Person the same Body which your Vertuous and Excellent Mother bore nine Months in her Chast and Honoured Womb and that your Nurse gave suck unto Most certainly it is the same And yet if you consider it well it cannot be doubted but that sublunary Matter being in a perpetual flux and in bodies which have internal Principles of Heat and Motion much continually transpiring out to make room for the supply of new Aliment at the length in long process of time all is so changed as that Ship at Athens may as well be called the same Ship that was there two hundred years before and whereof be reason of the continual reparations not one foot of the Timber is remaining in her that builded her at the first as this Body now can be called the same it was forty years agone unless some higher consideration keep up the Identity of it Now what that is let us examine and whether or no it will reach to our difficulty of the Resurrection Let us consider then how that which giveth the Numerical Individuation to a Body is the Substantial Form As long as that remaineth the same though the Matter be in a continual Flux and Motion yet the Thing is still the same There is not one drop of the same Water in the Thames that ran down by White-Hall yesternight yet no man will deny but that is the same River that was in Queen Elizabeth's time as long as it is supplied from the same Common Stock the Sea Though this Example reacheth not home it illustrateth the thing If then the Form remain absolutely the same after separation from the Matter that it was in the Matter which can happen only to Forms that subsist by themselves as humane Souls it followeth then That whensoever it is united to Matter again all Matter coming out of the same Common Magazine it maketh again the same Man with the same Eyes and all the same Limbs that were formerly Nay he is composed of the same Individual Matter for it hath the same Distinguisher and Individuator to wit the same Form or Soul Matter considered singly by it self hath no Distinction All Matter is in it self the same we must fancy it as we do the indigested Chaos it is a uniformly wide Ocean Particularize a few drops of the Sea by filling a Glass-full of them then that Glass-full is distinguished from all the rest of the watery Bulk But return back those few drops to from whence they were taken and the Glass-full that even now had an Individuation by it self loseth that and groweth one and the same with the other main Stock Yet if you fill your Glass again wheresoever you take it up so it be of the same Uniform Bulk of Water you had before it is the same Glass-full of Water that you had But as I said before this Example fitteth entirely no more than the other did In such abstracted speculations where we must consider Matter without Form which hath no actual Being we must not expect adequated Examples in Nature But enough is said to make a Speculative man see that if God should joyn the Soul of a lately dead man even whilst his dead Corpse should lye entire in his winding-sheet here unto a Body made of Earth taken from some Mountain in America it were most true and certain that the Body he should then lye by were the same Identical Body he lived with before his Death and late Resurrection It is evident that Sameness Thisness and Thatness belongeth not to Matter by it self for a general Indifference runneth through it all but onely as it is distinguished and individuated by the Form Which in our Case whensoever the same Soul doth it must be understood always to be the same Matter and Body This Point thus passed over I may piece to it what our Author saith of a Magazine of Subsistent Forms residing first in the Chaos and hereafter when the World shall have been destroyed by fire in the general heap of Ashes out of which God's Voice did and shall draw them out and clothe them with Matter This Language were handsome for a Poet or Rhetorician to speak but in a Philosopher that should ratiocinate strictly and rigorously I cannot admit it For certainly there are no Subsistent Forms of Corporeal things excepting the Soul of man which besides being an Informing Form hath another particular Consideration belonging to it too long to speak of here But whensoever that Compound is destroyed the Form perisheth with the whole And for the Natural Production of Corporeal things I conceive it to be wrought out by the Action and Passion of the Elements among themselves which introducing new Tempers and Dispositions into the Bodies where these Conflicts pass new Forms succeed old ones when the Dispositions are raised to such a height as can no longer consist with the preceding Form and are in the immediate Degree to fit the succeeding one which they usher in The Mystery of all which I have at large unfolded in my above-mentioned Treatise of the Immortality of the Soul I shall say no more to the first Part of our Physician 's Discourse after I have observed how his Consequence is no good one where he inferreth That if the Devils fore-knew who would be Damned or Saved it would save them the Labour and end their work of tempting Mankind to mischief and evil For whatsoever their Moral Design and Success be in it their Nature impelleth them to be always doing it For on the one sâ—de it is Active in the highest Degree as being pure Acts that is Spirits so on the other side they are Malign in as great an Excess By the one they must be always working wheresoever they may work like Water in a Vessel full of holes that will run out of every one of them which is not stopped By the other their whole Work must be malicious and mischievous Joyning then both these Qualities together it is evident they will always be tempting mankind though they know they shall be frustrate of their Moral End But were it not time that I made an end Yes it is more than time And therefore having once passed the limit that confined what was becoming the next step carried me into the Ocean of Errour which being Infinite and therefore more or less bearing no proportion in it I will proceed a little further to take a short Survey of his Second Part and hope for as easie Pardon after this Addition to my sudden and indigested Remarks as if I had enclosed them up now Methinks he beginneth with somewhat an affected Discourse to prove his natural Inclination to Charity which Vertue is the intended Theam of all the Remainder of his Discourse And I doubt he mistaketh the lowest Orbe or Lembe of that high Seraphick Vertue for the top and perfection of it and maketh a kind of humane Compassion to be
that the Soul in this her sublunary estate is wholly and in all acceptions inorganical but that for the performance of her ordinary actions there is required not onely a symmetry and proper disposition of Organs but a Crasis and temper correspondent to its operations Yet is not this mass of flesh and visible structure the instrument and proper corps of the Soul but rather of Sense and that the hand of Reason * In our study of Anatomy there is a mass of mysterious Philosophy and such as reduced the very Heathens to Divinity yet amongst all those rare discourses and curious pieces I find in the Fabrick of man I do not so much content my self as in that I find not there is no Organ or Instrument for the rational soul for in the brain which we term the seat of reason there is not any thing of moment more than I can discover in the crany of a beast and this is a sensible and no inconsiderable argument of the inorganity of the Soul at least in that sense we usually so conceive it Thus we are men and we know not how there is something in us that can be without us and will be after us though it is strange that it hath no history what it was before us nor cannot tell how it entred in us Sect. 37 Now for these walls of flesh wherein the Soul doth seem to be immured before the Resurrection it is nothing but an elemental composition and a Fabrick that must fall to ashes All flesh is grass is not onely metaphorically but litterally true for all those creatures we behold are but the herbs of the field digested into flesh in them or more remotely carnified in our selves Nay further we are what we all abhor Anthropophagi and Cannibals devourers not onely of men but of our selves and that not in an allegory but a positive truth for all this mass of flesh which we behold came in at our mouths this frame we look upon hath been upon our trenchers in brief we have devour'd our selves * I cannot believe the wisdom of Pythagoras did ever positively and in a literal sense affirm his Metempsycosis or impossible transmigration of the Souls of men into beasts of all Metamorphoses or transmigrations I believe only one that is of Lots wife for that of Nebuchodonosor proceeded not so far in all others I conceive there is no further verity than is contained in their implicite sense and morality I believe that the whole frame of a beast doth perish and is left in the tame slate after death as before it was materialled unto life that the souls of men know neither contrary nor corruption that they subsist beyond the body and out-live death by the priviledge of their proper natures and without a Miracle that the Souls of the faithful as they leave Earth take possession of Heaven that those apparitions and ghosts of departed persons are not the wandring souls of men but the unquiet walks of Devils prompting and suggesting us unto mischief blood and villany instilling and stealing into our hearts that the blessed spirits are not at rest in their graves but wander sollicitous of the affairs of the World but that those phantasms appear often and do frequent Coemeteries Charnel-houses and Churches it is because those are the dormitories of the dead where the Devil like an insolent Champion beholds with pride the spoils and Trophies of his Victory over Adam Sect. 38 This is that dismal conquest we all deplore that makes us so often cry O Adam quid fecisti I thank God I have not those strait ligaments or narrow obligations to the World as to dote on life or be convulst and tremble at the name of death Not that I am insensible of the dread and horrour thereof or by raking into the bowels of the deceased continual sight of Anatomies Skeletons or Cadaverous reliques like Vespilloes or Grave-makers I am become stupid or have forgot the apprehension of Mortality but that marshalling all the horrours and contemplating the extremities thereof I find not any thing therein able to daunt the courage of a man much less a well-resolved Christian And therefore am not angry at the errour of our first Parents or unwilling to bear a part of this common fate and like the best of them to dye that is to cease to breathe to take a farewel of the elements to be a kind of nothing for a moment to be within one instant of a spirit When I take a full view and circle of my self without this reasonable moderator and equal piece of Justice Death I do conceive my self the miserablest person extant were there not another life that I hope for all the vanities of this World should not intreat a moments breath from me could the Devil work my belief to imagine I could never dye I would not outlive that very thought I have so abject a conceit of this common way of existence this retaining to the Sun and Elements I cannot think this is to be a man or to live according to the dignity of humanity in exspectation of a better I can with patience embrace this life yet in my best meditations do often defie death I honour any man that contemns it nor can I highly love any that is afraid of it this makes me naturally love a Souldier and honour those tattered and contemptible Regiments that will dye at the command of a Sergeant For a Pagan there may be some motives to be in love with life but for a Christian to be amazed at death I see not how he can escape this Dilemma that he is too sensible of this life or hopeless of the life to come Sect. 39 Some Divines count Adam 30 years old at his Creation because they suppose him created in the perfect age and stature of man And surely we are all out of the computation of our age and every man is some months elder than he bethinks him for we live move have a being and are subject to the actions of the elements and the malice of diseases in that other World the truest Microcosm the Womb of our Mother For besides that general and common existence we are conceived to hold in our Chaos and whilst we sleep within the bosome of our causes we enjoy a being and life in three distinct worlds wherein we receive most manifest graduations In that obscure World and womb of our mother our time is short computed by the Moon yet longer then the days of many creatures that behold the Sun our selves being not yet without life sense and reason though for the manifestation of its actions it awaits the opportunity of objects and seems to live there but in its root and soul of vegetation entring afterwards upon the scene of the World we arise up and become another creature performing the reasonable actions of man and obscurely manifesting that part of Divinity in us but not in complement and perfection till we have once more cast
Divine Charity He will have it to be a general way of doing good It is true he addeth then for God's sake but he allayeth that again with saying he will have that good done as by Obedience and to accomplish God's will and looketh at the Effects it worketh upon our Souls but in a narrow compass like one in the vulgar throng that considereth God as a Judge and as a Rewarder or a Punisher Whereas perfect Charity is that vehement Love of God for his own sake for his Goodness for his Beauty for his Excellency that carrieth all the motions of our Soul directly and violently to Him and maketh a man disdain or rather hate all obstacles that may retard his journey to Him And that Face of it that looketh toward Mankind with whom we live and warmeth us to do others good is but like the overflowing of the main Stream that swelling above its Banks runneth over in a multitude of little channels I am not satisfied that in the Likeness which he putteth between God and Man he maketh the difference between them to be but such as between two Creatures that resemble one another For between these there is some proportion but between the others none at all In the examining of which Discourse wherein the Author observeth that no two Faces are ever seen to be perfectly alike nay no two Pictures of the same Face were exactly made so I could take occasion to insert a subtil and delightful Demonstration of Mr. Whites wherein he sheweth how it is impossible that two Bodies for example two Bouls should ever be made exactly like one another nay not rigorously equal in any one Accident as namely in weight but that still there will be some little difference and inequality between them the Reason of which Observation our Author medled not with were it not that I have been so long already as Digressions were now very unseasonable Shall I commend or censure our Author for believing so well of his acquired knowledge as to be dejected at the thought of not being able to leave it a Legacy among his Friends Or shall I examine whether it be not a high injury to wise and gallant Princes who out of the generousness and nobleness of their Nature do patronize Arts and learned Men to impute their so doing to vanity of desiring Praise or to fear of Reproach But let these pass I will not engage any that may be-friend him in a quarrel against him But I may safely produce Epictetus to contradict him when he letteth his kindness engulf him in deep afflictions for a friend For he will not allow his wise man to have an inward relenting a troubled feeling or compassion of anothers misfortunes That disordereth the one without any good to the other Let him afford all the assistances and relievings in his power but without intermingling himself in others Woe As Angels that do us good but have no passion for us But this Gentleman's kindness goeth yet further he compareth his love of a Friend to his love of God the Union of Friends Souls by affection to the Union of the three Persons in the Trinity and to the Hypostatical Vnion of two Natures in one Christ by the Words Incarnation Most certainly he expresseth himself to be a right good-natur'd man But if St. Augustine retracted so severely his pathetical Expressions for the Death of his Friend saying They savoured more of the Rhetorical Declamations of a young Orator than of the grave Confession of a devout Christian or somewhat to that purpose What censure upon himself may we expect of our Physician if ever he make any Retraction of this Discourse concerning his Religion It is no small misfortune to him that after so much time spent and so many places visited in a curious Search by travelling after the Acquisition of so many Languages after the wading so deep in Sciences as appeareth by the ample Inventory and Particular he maketh of himself The result of all this should be to profess ingenuously he had studied enough onely to become a Sceptick and that having run through all sorts of Learning he could find rest and satisfaction in none This I confess is the unlucky fate of those that light upon wrong Principles But Mr. White teacheth us how the Theorems and Demonstrations of Physicks may be linked and chained together as strongly and as continuedly as they are in the Mathematicks if men would but apply themselves to a right Method of Study And I do not find that Solomon complained of Ignorance in the height of Knowledge as this Gentleman saith but onely that after he hath rather acknowledged himself ignorant of nothing but that he understood the Natures of all Plants from the Cedar to the Hyssop and was acquainted with all the ways and paths of Wisdom and Knowledge he exclaimeth that all this is but Toyl and vexation of spirit and therefore adviseth men to change Humane Studies into Divine Contemplations and Affections I cannot agree to his resolution of shutting his Books and giving over the search of Knowledge and resigning himself up to Ignorance upon the reason that moveth him as though it were extream Vanity to waste our days in the pursuit of that which by attending but a little longer till Death hath closed the eyes of our Body to open those of our Soul we shall gain with ease we shall enjoy by infusion and is an accessory of our Glorification It is true as soon as Death hath played the Midwife to our second Birth our Soul shall then see all Truths more freely than our Corporal Eyes at our first Birth see all Bodies and Colours by the natural power of it as I have touched already and not onely upon the grounds our Author giveth Yet far be it from us to think that time lost which in the mean season we shall laboriously imploy to warm our selves with blowing a few little Sparks of that glorious fire which we shall afterwards in one instant leap into the middle of without danger of Scorching And that for two important Reasons besides several others too long to mention here the one for the great advantage we have by Learning in this life the other for the huge Contentment that the Acquisition of it here which applyeth a strong Affection to it will be unto us in the next life The want of Knowledge in our first Mother which exposed her to be easily deceived by the Sepents cunning was the root of all our ensuing Misery and Woe It is as true which we are taught by irrefragable Authority That Omnis peccans ignorat And the well head of all the calamities and mischiefs in all the World consisteth of the troubled and bitter waters of Ignorance Folly and Rashness to cure which the onely Remedy and Antidote is the Salt of true Learning the bitter Wood of Study painful Meditation and orderly Consideration I do not mean such Study as armeth wrangling Champions for clamorous Schools
I chuse for my devotions but * our grosser memories have then so little hold of our abstracted understandings that they forget the story and can only relate to our awaked souls a confused and broken tale of that that hath passed Aristotle who hath written a singular Tract of Sleep hath not methinks throughly defined it nor yet Galen though he seem to have corrected it for those Noctambuloes and night-walkers though in their sleep do yet injoy the action of their senses we must therefore say that there is something in us that is not in the jurisdiction of Morpheus and that those abstracted and ecstatick souls do walk about in their own corps as spirits with the bodies they assume wherein they seem to hear and feel though indeed the Organs are destitute of sense and their natures of those faculties that should inform them Thus it is observed that men sometimes upon the hour of their departure do speak and reason above themselves For then the soul beginning to be freed from the ligaments of the body begins to reason like her self and to discourse in a strain above mortality Sect. 12 We tearm sleep a death and yet it is waking that kills us and destroys those spirits that are the house of life 'T is indeed a part of life that best expresseth death for every man truely lives so long as he acts his nature or some way makes good the faculties of himself Themistocles therefore that slew his Soldier in his sleep was a merciful Executioner 't is a kind of punishment the mildness of no laws hath invented * I wonder the fancy of Lucan and Seneca did not discover it It is that death by which we may be literally said to dye daily a death which Adam dyed before his mortality a death whereby we live a middle and moderating point between life and death in fine so like death I dare not trust it without my prayers and an half adieu unto the World and take my farewel in a Colloquy with God The night is come like to the day Depart not thou great God away Let not my sins black as the night Eclipse the lustre of thy light Keep still in my Horizon for to me The Sun makes not the day but thee Thou whose nature cannot sleep On my temples centry keep Guard me ' gainst those watchful foes Whose eyes are open while mine close Let no dreams my head infest But such as Jacob''s temples blest While I do rest my Soul advance Make my sleep a holy trance That I may my rest being wrought Awake into some holy thought And with as active vigour run My course as doth the nimble Sun Sleep is a death O make me try By sleeping what it is to die And as gently lay my head On my grave as now my bed Howere I rest great God let me Awake again at least with thee And thus assur'd behold I lie Securely or to awake or die These are my drowsie days in vain I do now wake to sleep again O come that hour when I shall never Sleep again but wake for ever This is the Dormative I take to bedward I need no other Laudanum than this to make me sleep after which I close mine eyes in security content to take my leave of the Sun and sleep unto the resurrection Sect. 13 The method I should use in distributive Justice I often observe in commutative and keep a Geometrical proportion in both whereby becoming equable to others I become unjust to my self and supererogate in that common principle Do unto others as then wouldst he done unto thy self I was not born unto riches neither is it I think my Star to be wealthy or if it were the freedom of my mind and frankness of my disposition were able to contradict and cross my fates For to me avarice seems not so much a vice as a deplorable piece of madness * to conceive our selves Urinals or be perswaded that we are dead is not so ridiculous nor so many degrees beyond the power of Hellebore as this The opinion of Theory and positions of men are not so void of reason as their practised conclusions some have held that Snow is black that the earth moves that the Soul is air fire water but all this is Philosophy and there is no delirium if we do but speculate the folly and indisputable dotage of avarice to that subterraneous Idol and God of the Earth I do confess I am an Atheist I cannot perswade my self to honour that the World adores whatsoever vertue its prepared substance may have within my body it hath no influence nor operation without I would not entertain a base design or an action that should call me villain for the Indies and for this only do I love and honour my own soul and have methinks two arms too few to embrace my self Aristotle is too severe that will not allow us to be truely liberal without wealth and the bountiful hand of Fortune if this be true I must confess I am charitable only in my liberal intentions and bountiful well-wishes But if the example of the Mite be not only an act of wonder but an example of the noblest Charity surely poor men may also build Hospitals and the rich alone have not erected Cathedrals I have a private method which others observe not I take the opportunity of my self to do good I borrow occasion of Charity from mine own necessities and supply the wants of others when I am in most need my self for it is an honest stratagem to make advantage of our selves and so to husband the acts of vertue that where they were defective in one circumstance they may repay their want and multiply their goodness in another I have not Peru in my desires but a competence and ability to perform those good works to which he hath inclined my nature He is rich who hath enough to be charitable and it is hard to be so poor that a noble mind may not find a way to this piece of goodness He that giveth to the poor lendeth to the Lord there is more Rhetorick in that one sentence than in a Library of Sermons and indeed if those Sentences were understood by the Reader with the same Emphasis as they are delivered by the Author we needed not those Volumes of instructions but might be honest by an Epitome Upon this motive only I cannot behold a Beggar without relieving his Necessities with my Purse or his Soul with my Prayers these scenical and accidental differences between us cannot make me forget that common and untoucht part of us both there is under these Cantoes and miserable outsides these mutilate and semi bodies a soul of the same alloy with our own whose Genealogy is Gods as well as ours and is as fair a way to Salvation as our selves Statists that labour to contrive a Common-wealth without our poverty take away the object of charity not understanding only the Common wealth of Christian but