signature of the Eye sees or feels no more then the pulp of a wal-nut that hath the signature of the brain doth understand or imagine Observ. 39. What a pitifull account dost thou give me here of the difficulties I urged thee with My Queres were these You making two spirits in a man the Rationall and Sensitive First Whether the Rationall Spirit doth not hear and see in a man Here you distinguish The Sensitive Spirit sees the Object say you and the Rationall the Species But I say unto thee that sensation is nothing else but the perceiving of some present corporeall object and that the rationall soul doth For when two men discourse that in them that reasons hears the words and sees the party with whom it reasoneth does it not Therefore they both see the object But you will say One sees by a species the other without I say nothing can be discerned without a species that is without an actuall representation of the thing discerned So that that distinction is in vain And I would adde this further That every sentient spirit must perceive by its own species and not by anothers But thou sayest This sensitive Spirit like a glasse represents the species of externall objects Then it seems the Sensitive spirits office is to be the glasses of the soul to see things in but glasses themselves Magicus are not sentient nor need this Spirit be so that is the souls glasse and it is plain it is not For if these two were two different sensitive spirits then they would have two different Animadversions but there is but one animadversive spirit in a man and therefore but one Sensitive And that there is but one animadversive spirit in a Man is plain from hence that if the Rationall animadversive bestow its animadversion fully elsewhere the Sensitive in man cannot perform the thousandth part of that which is performed in brutes We should loose our selves in the most triviall matters when notwithstanding this sensitive spirit in man would have as quick a vehicle as in most brutes Besides this sensitive spirit having this animadversion would have also a Memory apart and would be able while the Rationall is busied about something else to lay up observations such as beasts do by it self and then long after to shew them to the Rationall to its sudden amazement and astonishment But none of these things are And in my apprehension it is in a very grosse and palpable way sensible to me that there is but one Animadversive in me and I think I am no monster If I be it is it seems in that I am all rationall spirit and have had the luck to misse of the sensitive the beast Page 77. line 3. If this be true then there be two hearing and seeing souls in a man This is my second Quere I ask'd if there be To this you answer Ha ha he A very profound answer This is no laughing matter my friend Have I not already shew'd you some difficulties this asserting two sensitive Spirits in a man is laden with Answer them Phil. I should gladly heare thee use thy tongue as well as see thee shew thy teeth by laughing For that slender faint reason that follows thy loud laughing viz. The objects are different and the senses are different that is taken away already For the sting of my Argument is not this that there would be two sensitive souls of the same nature in the body of a man but that there should be two sensitive souls at all And indeed considering that the superiour soul contains the faculties of the inferiour it is altogether needlesse And that is a very sober truth Entia non sunt multiplicanda sine necessitate Which is to the same sense with that so often repeated in Aristotle and Theophrastus {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} God and Nature do nothing in vain And the right organization of parts and due temperature of the body and proportion of animal spirits this is all the glasse the soul of man wants in this life to see by or receive species from But this glasse hath no more sense it self then an urinall or looking-glasse hath Where are you now Phil. with your Ha hahe Line 10. I could Mastix teach thee an higher truth Yes truly Magicus you are best of all at those truths which dwell in the Highest You love to soar aloft out of the ken of sense and reason that you may securely Raunt it there in words of a strange sound and no signification But though thou fliest up so high like a Crow that hath both his eyes bor'd out yet I have thee in a string and can pluck thee down for all thy fluttering Thou sayest that a soul may understand all things sine conversione ad Phantasmata this I suppose thou wouldst say to contradict Aristotle but I do not suspect thee of so much learning as to have read him He tells us in his book De Anima {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} that there is no understanding without Phantasmes You say that we may understand all things without them What think you of Individualls Magicus of which it is controverted amongst the Platonists whether there be any Idea's of them or no But being you are so confident an assertor let 's heare how stout a prover you are of your assertions Know you this you have spoken by Sense Reason or divine Revelation By this string I have pluck'd this blind Crow down I have him as tame in my hand as a Titmouse look how he pants and gapes and shews the white tip of his tongue but sayes nothing Go thy wayes Phil. for a pure Philosophick Thraso Observ. 41. Three quarters of a year hast thou spent c. O Magicus Magicus thou art youthfull and vain-glorious and tellest thy Tutour that this hasty cookery thou entertainest him with was dispatch'd and dress'd up some ten daies after the Presse was deliver'd of my Observations How many ten dayes doest thou mean by thy some ten dayes Thou wouldst have thy Tutour to stroke thee on the head for a quick-parted lad I perceive Eugenius But hadst thou not better have staid longer and writ better sense more reason and with lesse rayling But I poore slow beast how long dost thou think I was viewing and observing that other excellent piece of thine I confesse Magicus because thou forcest me to play the fool as well as thy self I was almost three quarters of a Moneth about it and how much more is that then some ten dayes though but twice told over and I will not be so curiously vain-glorious as to tell thee how great a share of this time was daily taken from me by necessary imployments This is to answer thy folly with folly But I thank God that I glory in nothing but that I feel my self an Instrument in the hand of God to work the good of Men The greatest strength of a man is weaknesse and the
discern that there was sobriety enough at the bottome of all that mirth But as for this Magia Adamica I confesse I have not read it but I do favourably conjecture that the Authour thereof is as well skilled in those books of Magick that Adam read by the fire-side in winter nights while Eve held to him the candle as any young man is in these European parts I let Adamicus alone my businesse is onely with Anthroposophus over whom now I having so full a victory it will be expected perhaps that I lead him about in triumph But I must answer my friends in Christian sobernesse that I am the right Philalethes a lover of truth more then a lover of victory and of victory more then of triumph sat is est prostrâsse leoni Onely I will say not of his Person but of that Dispensation and Genius in which he is in for the present Lo there lies the contagious spectrum of Ephesus which I have discovered to be the pest of the Common-wealth of learning and of humane and divine reason as much as that demoniacall imposture was the walking plague of that famous city and now he hath been pelted a little with hard language as Apollonius commanded the Ephesians to stone that hypocriticall old Mendicant with stones he appears in the very same shape with him at the uncovering of the heap that is an uggly huge black Mastife sprawling for life and foaming forth abundance of filthy stinking scum after the manner of mad dogs And thus have I approv'd my self wise as Apollonius in discovering imposture and valiant as Hercules who over-mastered that {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} as Dionysius calls it that brazen-barking Cerberus And now O men of Ephesus I mean all you that reap the fruit of this noble exploit of mine rear me up my deserved Trophey and inscribe this Tetrastich upon it for an everlasting monument of your gratitude to me and love to the truth Religious Heat as yet unpurged quite From fleshly sense and self when 't makes a stir About high Myst'ries above Reasons light Is at the bottome but a rabid curre But that I may conceal nothing from you O men of Ephesus I must tell you that whether you rear up this monument or whether you forbear all is one For the truth of these verses is already written in the corner stones of the Universe and engraven on the lasting pillars of Eternity Heaven and earth may passe away but not one tittle of this truth shall passe away High and windy Notions do but blow up and kindle more fiercely the fire of Hell in the hearts of men From whence is Pride and Contention and bitter Zeal This is the pest and plague of Mankind and the succeeding torture of the sons of Adam For while the mind of man catcheth at high things of which she is uncapable till she be refined and purged she doth but fire the frame of her little world by her over-busie Motion which burning in grosse fewel fills all with smoke And thus the soul is even smothered and stifled in her narrow mansion Her first enlargement here must therefore be by Temperance and Abstemiousnesse For without this breathing-hole for fresh aire devotion it self will choak her still more and more heating her thick and polluted spirits in such sort that they cannot be sufficiently rectified by the power of the brain But in this Dispensation especially is lodged a strong voice weak sense and a rude contempt of any thing that will trouble the head as Reason Philosophy or any but ordinary subtilty in learning But they love Christ very heartily after their grosse way as their Protectour and Securer from what outward evil naturally attends so bad an inward condition But being so immersed in brutish sense and yet with conscience of sinne if any body have but the trick to perswade them that sinne is but a name he will be a very welcome Apostle to them and they will find more ease to their beastly nature in phansying nothing to be sinne then they did in making their Hypocriticall addresses to an offended Saviour And then poore souls through the foulnesse of the flesh are they easily inveigled into Atheisme it self In so great danger are we of the most mischievous miscarriages by contemning of those known and confessed vertues of Temperance Continence and Chastity But we 'le suppose Men in a great measure temperate yet how farre off are they still from reall happinesse in themselves or from not disturbing the happinesse of others so long as Envy Ambition Covetousnesse and Self-respect doth still lodge in them Here indeed Reason may happily get a little more elbow-room but it will be but to be Patron to those vices and to make good by Argument harsh opinions of God and peremptorily to conclude the power of Christ weaker then the force of sinne And the Phansie in these something more refined Spirits will be more easily figurable into various conceits but very little to the purpose Of which some must go for sober Truths and those that are more fully shining in the midst of a shadowy Melancholiz'd imagination must bid fair for Divine Inspiration though neither Miracle nor Reason countenance them But you O men of Ephesus if any one tell you strange devises and forbid you the use of your Reason or the demanding of a Miracle you will be so wise as to look upon him as one that would bid you wink with your eyes that he might the more easily give you a box of the Eare or put his hand into your Pockets Now out of this second Dispensation innumerable swarms of Sects rise in all the world For Falsehood and Imagination is infinite but Truth is one And the benignitie of the Divine Spirit having no harbour in all this varietie of religious Pageantry Envy Covetousnesse and Ambition must needs make them bustle and tear all the world in pieces if the hand of Providence did not hold them in some limits Quin laniant mundum tanta est discordia fratrum as he saith of the winds In this Dispensation lodgeth Anger and active Zeal concerning Opinions and Ceremonies Uncertainty and Anxietie touching the purposes of God and a rigid injudicious Austerity of which little comes but the frighting men off from Religion which notwithstanding if it be had in the truth thereof is the most chearfull and lovely thing in the world These men having not reached to the Second Covenant will also thank any body that could release them from the First For whereas true Religion is the great joy and delight of them that attain to it theirs is but their burden And so it is not impossible that these may be also wound off to the depth of wickednesse and sink also in time even to Atheisme it self For what is reall in them will work but what is imaginary will prove it self ineffectuall Wherefore is it not farre better for men to busie all their strength in destroying those things
all the world an eager desire after Knowledge and as insatiable thirst after Fame Both which are to be reputed farre above that dull and earthly pronenesse of the mind of some men whose thoughts are bent upon little else but the bed and the board But I tell thee that this desire of thine being kindled so high in thy melancholy complexion there arise these three inconvenieuces from this inordinate heat First thy spirits are so agitated that thou canst not soberly and cautiously consider the Objects of thy mind to see what is truly consequent what not and so thy reason goes much to wrack Secondly thy melancholy being so highly heated it makes thee think confidently thou hast a Phantasme or Idea of a thing belonging to this or that word when thou hast not which is a kind of inward Phrensie and answers to the seeing of outward apparitions when there is nothing before the sight Thus art thou defeated in thy designe of knowledge in divine and naturall things by this distemper But thirdly the same untamed heat causeth Boldnesse Confidence and Pride And hence ariseth thy Imprudence For I tell thee Eugenius there is no such imprudent thing in the world as Pride Wot'st thou not what the humour of all men is how they think themselves no inconsiderable things in the world You know the story in Herodotus how when the Greeks had overcome the Persians and after it was debated amongst them to whom the {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} belonged who should have the honour of being reputed most valiant in that service every one did acknowledge that next to himself Themistocles did best Wherefore it is plain that he that will not let any man go before him provokes all men Here therefore was thy imprudence Eugenius that thou wouldst take the {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} to thy self without so much as any debate or asking leave when every Galenist Aristotelian Cartesian and Theosophist thinks it belongs to him as much as to thee Thus hast thou provoked all men against thee and made ship-wrack of thy fame as well as fallen short of Learning But you 'le say why what would you have me to have done as some others do who though they be proud yet put on a handsome dresse of Modesty and squeamish Humility That I tell thee had been indeed something more like Prudence which thy raised heat could not stoop to but I must confesse it had been but a kind of Morall Sneaking For as the bending down of the upper parts of the body so that the talnesse of the stature thereof is concealed is the Sneaking of the body so to make a mans self more humble then he is or lesse high-minded is the Sneaking of the soul But the first point of wisdome is to be really humble indeed For an humble mind is as still as the night and as clear as the noon-day So that it is able without any impatiency or prejudice to discern all things and rightly to judge of all things This Christian temper is so sober and wise that no Imposture can surprize it nor ever will it hurt it felf by rashnesse and imprudency This is the heir of God the treasury of all humane divine naturall knowledge and the delight and praise of men where ever it appears But the inseparable companions of haughtinesse are Ignorance Shame and Enmity But beleeve it Eugenius as this divine Humility is of more worth so is it of more labour then to find the Philosophers stone or the famous medicine you talk of I am certain of more consequence by ten thousand times And methinks now at length through all those waves and rufflings of thy disordered mind I see something at the bottome in thee O Eugenius that begins to assent to what I say that begins to shine and smile and look upon me as a very pleasant Apostle sent not without providence to toy and sport thee into a more sober temper and advertise thee of the highest good that the soul of man is capable of and thou wilt I am confident very suddenly say and that from thy heart that better are the wounds of a friend then the kisses of an enemy Or if thou canst not yet phansie him a friend that hath worn the vizard of a foe so long yet I do not mistrust but that thou wilt be so wise as according to Xenophons Principle not onely not to be hurt but also to be profited by thine enemy An enemy indeed is not a thing to be embosomed and embraced as the Satyr would have done the fire when he first saw it and therefore was forewarned by Prometheus to abstain {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} But in the mean time that which it would pain or consume may by observing the right laws of using it receive kindly warmth and vigour from it and work excellent things in virtue of its heat or light Did not Telephus heal his wound by his enemies spear And had not Jason his impostume cured by that weapon that was meant for his deadly dispatch You know also the story of Hiero Eugenius who when his enemy had upbraided him with his stinking breath chid his wife when he came home because she never had discovered it to him all that time of their living together But she being very honest and simple told her husband that she thought all mens breaths smelt so You see then how much more easie it is to hear what is true concerning us of our professed Adversaries then of our bosome Friends But methinks I hear thee answer that neither a bosome Friend nor an embittered Enemy can be competent judges of a mans vices or vertues For the one would be too favourable and the other too severe What then wouldst thou have some Third thing a mean betwixt both according to that known Aphorisme {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} whom thou mightest hope would prove an impartiall judge why that 's I Phil. whom I dare say thou art confident to be no friend to thee and I dare swear I am no enemy And therefore why should I despair but that my fitnesse and skill may prove as successefull in allaying of Eugenius his tumour as that unskilfull hand was lucky in lancing Jasons impostume And being once cured do not then repine that there was a time wherein thou wast unsound no more then Alexander the great that he was once so little as to be lodged within the narrow compasse of his mothers wombe Or Milo who at length could lift an ox that he was once so weak that he could not stirre a lamb And what think'st thou Phil. of Plato Empedocles Democritus Socrates and other profound sages of the World can you imagine that when they had arrived to that pitch of knowledge that it was any shame or regret to them that there was once a time when they knew not one letter of the Alphabet Why then should my Eugenius be troubled that he