wound a thousand and at one blow assassine the honour of a Nation It is as compleat a piece of madness to miscal and rave against the times or think to recal men to reason by a fit of passion Democritus that thought to laugh the times into goodness seems to me as deeply Hypochondriack as Heraclitus that bewailed them It moves not my spleen to behold the multitude in their proper humours that is in their fits of folly and madness as well understanding that wisdom is not prophan'd unto the World and 't is the priviledge of a few to be Vertuous They that endeavour to abolish Vice destroy also Virtue for contraries though they destroy one another are yet in life of one another Thus Virtue abolish vice is an Idea again the community of sin doth not disparage goodness for when Vice gains upon the major part Virtue in whom it remains becomes more excellent and being lost in some multiplies its goodness in others which remain untouched and persist intire in the general inundation I can therefore behold Vice without a Satyr content only with an admonition or instructive reprehension for Noble Natures and such as are capable of goodness are railed into vice that might as easily be admonished into virtue and we should be all so far the Orators of goodness as to protract her from the power of Vice and maintain the cause of injured truth No man can justly censure or condemn another because indeed no man truly knows another This I perceive in my self for I am in the dark to all the world and my nearest friends behold me but in a cloud those that know me but superficially think less of me than I do of my self those of my neer acquaintance think more God who truly knows me knows that I am nothing for he only beholds me and all the world who looks not on us through a derived ray or a trajection of a sensible species but beholds the substance without the helps of accidents and the forms of things as we their operations Further no man can judge another because no man knows himself for we censure others but as they disagree from that humour which we fancy laudible in our selves and commend others but for that wherein they seem to quadrate and consent with us So that in conclusion all is but that we all condem Self-love 'T is the general complaint of these times and perhaps of those past that charity grows cold which I perceive most verified in those which most do manifest the fires and flames of zeal for it is a virtue that best agrees with coldest natures and such as are complexioned for humility But how shall we expect Charity towards others when we are uncharitable to our selves Charity begins at home is the voice of the World yet is every man his greatest enemy and as it were his own Executioner Non occides is the Commandment of God yet scarce observed by any man for I perceive every man is his own Atropos and lends a hand to cut the thred of his own days Cain was not therefore the first Murtherer but Adam who brought in death whereof he beheld the practice and example in his own son Abel and saw that verified in the experience of another which faith could not perswade him in the Theory of himself Sect. 5 There is I think no man that apprehends his own miseries less than my self and no man that so neerly apprehends anothers I could lose an arm without a tear and with few groans methinks be quartered into pieces yet can I weep most seriously at a Play and receive with true passion the counterfeit grief of those known and professed Impostures It is a barbarous part of inhumanity to add unto any afflicted parties misery or indeavour to multiply in any man a passion whose single nature is already above his patience this was the greatest affliction of Job and those oblique expostulations of his Friends a deeper injury than the down-right blows of the Devil It is not the tears of our own eyes only but of our friends also that do exhaust the current of our sorrows which falling into many streams runs more peaceably and is contented with a narrower channel It is an act within the power of charity to translate a passion out of one brest into another and to divide a sorrow almost out of it self for an affliction like a dimension may be so divided as if not indivisible at least to become insensible Now with my friend I desire not to share or participate but to engross his sorrows that by making them mine own I may more easily discuss them for in mine own reason and within my self I can command that which I cannot intreat without my self and within the circle of another I have often thought those noble pairs and examples of friendship not so truly Histories of what had been as fictions of what should be but I now perceive nothing in them but possibilities nor any thing in the Heroick examples of Damon and Pythias Achilles and Patroclus which methinks upon some grounds I could not perform within the narrow compass of my self That a man should lay down his life for his Friend seems strange to vulgar affections and such as confine themselves within that Worldly principle Charity begins at home For my own part I could never remember the relations that I held unto my self nor the respect that I owe unto my own nature in the cause of God my Country and my Friends Next to these three I do embrace my self I confess I do not observe that order that the Schools ordain our affections to love our Parents Wives Children and then our Friends for excepting the injunctions of Religior I do not find in my self such a necessary and indissoluble Sympathy to all those of my blood I hope I do not break the fifth Commandment if I conceive I may love my friend before the nearest of my blood even those to whom I owe the principles of life I never yet cast a true affection on a woman but I have loved my friend as I do virtue my soul my God From hence me thinks I do conceive how God loves man what happiness there is in the love of God Omitting all other there are three most mystical unions two natures in one person three persons in one nature one soul in two bodies For though indeed they be really divided yet are they so united as they seem but one and make rather a duality than two distinct souls Sect. 6 There are wonders in true affection it is a body of Enigma 's mysteries and riddles wherein two so become one as they both become two I love my friend before my self and yet methinks I do not love him enough some few months hence my multiplied affection will make me believe I have not loved him at all when I am from him I am dead till I be with him when I am with him I am not satisfied but
manner under an Armour of Proof that he is almost invulnerable he can scarce miscarry he hath not so much as an inclination to work contrarily the Alluring Baits of this World tempt him not he disliketh he hateth even his necessarry Commerce with them whilst he liveth On the other side the Hireling that steereth his course by his Reward and Punishment doth well I confess but he doth it with Reluctance he carrieth the Ark God's Image his Soul safely home it is true but he loweth pitifully after his Calves that he leaveth behind him among the Philistines In a word he is vertuous but if he might safely he would do vicious things And hence be the ground in Nature if so I might say of our Purgatory Methinks two such minds may not unfitly be compared to two Maids whereof one hath a little sprinkling of the Green sickness and hath more mind to Ashes Chalk or Leather than meats of solid and good nourishment but forbeareth them knowing the languishing condition of Health it will bring her to But the other having a ruddy vigorous and perfect Constitution and enjoying a compleat entire Encrasie delights in no food but of good nouriture and loaths the other Delights Her Health is discovered in her looks and she is secure from any danger of that Malady whereas the other for all her good Diet beareth in her Complexion some sickly Testimony of her depraved Appetite and if she be not very wary she is in danger of a relapse It falleth fit in this place to examine our Authors apprehension of the end of such honest Worthies and Philosophers as he calleth them that died before Christ his Incarnation Whether any of them could be saved or no Truly my Lord I make no doubt at all but if any followed in the whole Tenor of their lives the Dictamens of right Reason but that their journey was secure to Heaven Out of the former Discourse appeareth what temper of mind is necessary to get thither And that Reason would dictate such a temper to a perfectly judicious man though but in the state of Nature as the best and most rational for him I make no doubt at all But it is most true they are exceeding few if any in whom Reason worketh clearly and is not overswayed by Passion and terrene Affections they are few that can discern what is reasonable to be done in every Circumstance Pauci quos aequus amavit Jupiter aut ardens evexit ad aethera virtus Diis geniti potuere And fewer that knowing what is best can win of themselves to do accordingly Video meliora proboque deteriora sequor being most mens cases so that after all that can be expected at the hands of Nature and Reason in their best Habit since the lapse of them we may conclude it would have been a most difficult thing for any man and a most impossible one for mankind to attain unto Beatitude if Christ had not come to teach and by his example to shew us the way And this was the Reason of his Incarnation teaching Life and Death For being God we could not doubt his Veracity when he tolds us news of the other world having all things in his Power and yet enjoying none of the Delights of this Life no man should stick at foregoing them since his Example sheweth all men that such a course is best whereas few are capable of the Reason of it And for his last Act dying in such an afflicted manner he taught us how the securest way to step immediately into Perfect Happiness is to be crucified to all the desires Delights and Contentments of this World But to come back to our Physician Truly my Lord I must needs pay him as a due the acknowledging his pious Discourses to be Excellent and Pathetical ones containing worthy Motives to incite one to Vertue and to deter one from Vice thereby to gain Heaven and to avoid Hell Assuredly he is owner of a solid Head and of a strong generous Heart Where he employeth his thoughts upon such things as resort to no higher or more abstruse Principles than such as occur in ordinary Conversation with the World or in the common Tract of Study and Learning I know no man would say better But when he meeteth with such difficulties as his next concerning the Resurrection of the Body wherein after deep Meditation upon the most abstracted Principles and Speculations of the Metaphysicks one hath much ado to solve the appearing Contradictions in Nature There I do not at all wonder he should tread a little awry and go astray in the dark for I conceive his course of life hath not permitted him to allow much time unto the unwinding of such entangled and abstracted Subtleties But if it had I believe his Natural parts are such as he might have kept the Chair from most men I know For even where he roveth widest it is with so much wit and sharpness as putteth me in mind of a great mans Censure upon Scaliger's Cyclometrica a matter he was not well versed in That he had rather err so ingeniously as he did than hit upon Truth in that heavy manner as the Jesuit his Antagonist stuffeth his Books Most assuredly his wit and smartness in this Discourse is of the finest Standard and his insight into severer Learning will appear as piercing unto such as use not strictly the Touchstone and the Test to examine every piece of the glittering Coyn he payeth his Reader with But to come to the Resurrection Methinks it is but a gross Conception to think that every Atome of the present individual Matter of a Body every grain of Ashes of a burned Cadaver scattered by the Wind throughout the World and after numerous Variations changed peradventure into the Body of another man should at the sounding of the last Trumpet be raked together again from all the corners of the Earth and be made up anew into the same Body it was before of the first Man Yet if we will be Christians and rely upon God's Promises we must believe that we shall rise again with the same Body that walked about did eat drink and live here on Earth and that we shall see our Saviour and Redeemer with the same the very same eyes wherewith we now look upon the fading Glories of this comtemptible World How shall these seeming Contrarieties be reconciled If the latter be true why should not the former be admitted To explicate this Riddle the better give me leave to ask your Lordship if your Lordship if you now see the Cannons the Ensigns the Arms and other Martial Preparations at Oxford with the same Eyes wherewith many years agone you looked upon Porphyrie's and Aristotle's Leases there I doubt not but you will answer me Assuredly with the very same Is that Noble and Graceful Person of yours that begetteth both Delight and Reverence in every one that looketh upon it Is that Body of yours that now is grown to such comely and
the Arabians That the Souls of men perished with their Bodies but should yet be raised again at the last day not that I did absolutely conceive a mortality of the Soul but if that were which Faith not Philosophy hath yet throughly disproved and that both entred the grave together yet I held the same conceit thereof that we all do for the body that it rile again Surely it is but the merits of our unworthy Natures if we sleep in darkness until the last Alarm A serious reflex upon my own unworthiness did make me backward from challenging this prerogative of my Soul so that I might enjoy my Saviour at the last I could with patience be nothing almost unto Eternity The second was that of Origen That God would not persist in his vengeance for ever but after a definite time of his wrath he would release the damned Souls from torture which error I fell into upon a serious contemplation of the great Attribute of God his Mercy and did a little cherish it in my self because I found therein no malice and a ready weight to sway me from the other extream of despair whereunto Melancholy and Contemplative Natures are too easily disposed A third there is which I did never positively maintain or practise but have often wished it had been consonant to Truth and not offensive to my Religion and that is the Prayer for the dead whereunto I was inclin'd from some charitable inducements whereby I could scarce contain my Prayers for a friend at the ringing of a Bell or behold his Corps without an Orison for his Corps 'T was a good way methought to be remembred by posterity and far more noble than an History These opinions I never maintained with pertinacy or endeavoured to enveagle any mans belief unto mine nor so much as ever revealed or disputed them with my dearest friends by which means I neither propagated them in others nor confirmed them in my self but suffering them to flame upon their own substance without addition of new fuel they went out insensibly of themselves therefore these Opinions though condemned by lawful Councels were not Heresies in me but bare Errors and single Lapses of my understanding without a joynt depravity of my will Those have not onely depraved understandings but diseased affections which cannot enjoy a singularity without an Heresie or be the Author of an Opinion without they be of a Sect also this was the Villany of the first Schism of Lucifer who was not content to err alone but drew into his Faction many Legions and upon this experience he tempted only Eve as well understanding the Communicable nature of Sin and that to deceive but one was tacitely and upon consequence to delude them both Sect. 8 That Heresies should arise we have the Prophesie of Christ but that old ones should be abolished we hold no prediction That there must be Heresies is true not only in our Church but also in any other even in the doctrines heretical there will be super-heresies and Arians not only divided from their Church but also among themselves for heads that are disposed unto Schism and complexionably propense to innovation are naturally disposed for a community nor will be ever confined unto the order or oeconomy of one body and therefore when they separate from others they knit but loosely among themselves nor contented with a general breach or dichotomy with their Church do subdivide and mince themselves almost into Atoms 'T is true that men of singular parts and humours have not been free from singular opinions and conceits in all Ages retaining something not only beside the opinion of his own Church or any other but also any I particular Author which notwithstanding a sober Judgment may do without offence or heresie for there is yet after all the Decrees of Councils and the niceties of Schools many things untouch'd unimagin'd wherein the liberty of an honest reason may play and expatiate with security and far without the circle of an Heresie Sect. 9 As for those wingy Mysteries in Divinity and airy subtleties in Religion which have unhing'd the brains of better heads they never stretched the Pia Mater of mine methinks there be not impossibilities enough in Religion for an active faith the deepest Mysteries ours contains have not only been illustrated but maintained by Sylogism and the rule of Reason I love to lose my self in a mystery to pursue my Reason to an O altitudo 'T is my solitary recreation to pose my apprehension with those involved Aenigma's and riddles of the Trinity with Incarnation and Resurrection I can answer all the Objections of Satan and my rebellious reason with that odd resolution I learned of Tertullian Certum est quia impossible est I desire to exercise my faith in the difficultest point for to credit ordinary and visible objects is not faith but perswasion Some believe the better for seeing Christ's Sepulchre and when they have seen the Red Sea doubt not of the Miracle Now contrarily I bless my self and am thankful that I lived not in the days of Miracles that I never saw Christ nor his Disciples I would not have been one of those Israelites that pass'd the Red Sea nor one of Christ's patients on whom he wrought his wonders then had my faith been thrust upon me nor should I enjoy that greater blessing pronounced to all that believe and saw not 'T is an easie and necessary belief to credit what our eye and sense hath examined I believe he was dead and buried and rose again and desire to see him in his glory rather than to contemplate him in his Cenotaphe or Sepulchre Nor is this much to believe as we have reason we owe this faith unto History they only had the advantage of a bold and noble Faith who lived before his coming who upon obscure prophesies and mystical Types could raise a belief and expect apparent impossibilities Sect. 10 'T is true there is an edge in all sirm belief and with an easie Metaphor we may say the Sword of Faith but in these obscurities I rather use it in the adjunct the Apostles gives it a Buckler under which I conceive a wary combatant may lye invulnerable Since I was of understanding to know we knew nothing my reason hath been more pliable to the will of Faith I am now content to understand a mystery without a rigid definition in an easie and Platonick description That allegorical description of Hermes pleaseth me beyond all the Metaphysical definitions of Divines where I cannot satisfie my reason I love to humour my fancy I had as live you tell me that anima est angelus hominis est Corpus Dei as Entelechia Lux est umbra Dei as actus perspicui where there is an obscurity too deep for our Reason 't is good to sit down with a description periphrasis or adumbration for by acquainting our reason how unable it is to display the visible and obvious effects
essential points of happiness wherein we resemble our Maker To wiser desires it is satisfaction enough to deserve though not to enjoy the favours of Fortune let Providence provide for Fools 't is not partiality but equity in God who deals with us but as our natural Parents those that are able of Body and Mind he leaves to their deserts to those of weaker merits he imparts a larger portion and pieces out the defect of one by the access of the other Thus have we no just quarrel with Nature for leaving us naked or to envy the Horns Hoofs Skins and Furs of other Creatures being provided with Reason that can supply them all We need not labour with so many Arguments to confute Judicial Astrology for if there be a truth therein it doth not injure Divinity if to be born under Mercury disposeth us to be witty under Jupiter to be wealthy I do not owe a Knee unto these but unto that merciful Hand that hath ordered my indifferent and uncertain nativity unto such benevolous Aspects Those that hold that all things are governed by Fortune had not erred had they not persisted there The Romans that erected a Temple to Fortune acknowledged therein though in a blinder way somewhat of Divinity for in a wise supputation all things begin and end in the Almighty There is a nearer way to Heaven than Homer's Chain an easie Logick may conjoyn Heaven and Earth in one Argument and with less than a Sorites resolve all things into God Far though we christen effects by their most sensible and nearest Causes yet is God the true and infallible Cause of all whose concourse though it be general yet doth it subdivide it self into the particular Actions of every thing and is that Spirit by which each singular Essence not only subsists but performs its operation Sect. 19 The bad construction and perverse comment on these pair of second Causes or visible hands of God have perverted the Devotion of many unto Atheism who forgetting the honest Advisoes of Faith have listened unto the conspiracy of Passion and Reason I have therefore always endeavoured to compose those Feuds and angry Dissentions between Affection Faith and Reason For there is in our Soul a kind of Triumvirate or triple Government of three Competitors which distract the Peace of this our Common-wealth not less than did that other the State of Rome As Reason is a Rebel unto Faith so Passion unto Reason As the Propositions of Faith seem absurd unto Reason so the Theorems of Reason unto Passion and both unto Reason yet a moderate and peaceable discretion may so state and order the matter that they may be all Kings and yet make but one Monarchy every one exercising his Soveraignty and Prerogative in a due time and place according to the restraint and limit of circumstance There is as in Philosophy so in Divinity sturdy doubts and boisterous Objections wherewith the unhappiness of our knowledge too nearly acquainteth us More of these no man hath known than my self which I confess I conquered not in a martial posture but on my Knees For our endeavours are not only to combat with doubts but always to dispute with the Devil the villany of that Spirit takes a hint of Infidelity from our Studies and by demonstrating a naturality in one way makes us mistrust a miracle in another Thus having perused the Archidoxes and read the secret Sympathies of things he would disswade my belief from the miracle of the Brazen Serpent make me conceit that Image worked by Sympathy and was but an Aegyptian trick to cure their Diseases without a miracle Again having seen some experiments of Bitumen and having read far more of Naphtha he whispered to my curiosity the fire of the Altar might be natural and bid me mistrust a miracle in Elias when he entrenched the Altar round with Water for that inflamable substance yields not easily unto Water but flames in the Arms of its Antagonist And thus would he inveagle my belief to think the combustion of Sodom might be natural and that there was an Asphaltick and Bituminous nature in that Lake before the Fire of Gomorrah I know that Manna is now plentifully gathered in Calabria and Josephus tells me in his days it was as plentiful in Arabia the Devil therefore made the quaere Where was then the miracle in the days of Moses the Israelite saw but that in his time the Natives of those Countries behold in ours Thus the Devil played at Chess with me and yielding a Pawn thought to gain a Queen of me taking advantage of my honest endeavours and whilst I laboured to raise the structure of my Reason he strived to undermine the edifice of my Faith Sect. 20 Neither had these or any other ever such advantage of me as to incline me to any point of Infidelity or desperate positions of Atheism for I have been these many years of opinion there was never any Those that held Religion was the difference of Man from Beasts have spoken probably and proceed upon a principle as inductive as the other That doctrine of Epicurus that denied the Providence of God was no Atheism but a magnificent and high strained conceit of his Majesty which he deemed too sublime to mind the trivial Actions of those inferiour Creatures That fatal necessity of the Stoicks is nothing but the immutable Law of his will Those that heretofore denied the Divinity of the Holy Ghost have been condemned but as Hereticks and those that now deny our Saviour though more than Hereticks are not so much as Atheists for though they deny two persons in the Trinity they hold as we do there is but one God That Villain and Secretary of Hell that composed that miscreant piece of the three Impostors though divided from all Religions and was neither Jew Turk nor Christian was not a positive Atheist I confess every Country hath its Machiavel every Age its Lciuan whereof common Heads must not hear nor more advanced Judgments too rashly venture on It is the Rhetorick of Satan and may pervert a loose or prejudicate belief Sect. 22 I confess I have perused them all and can discover nothing that may startle a discreet belief yet are their heads carried off with the Wind and breath of such motives I remember a Doctor in Physick of Italy who could perfectly believe the immortality of the Soul because Galen seemed to make a doubt thereof With another I was familiarly acquainted in France a Divine and a man of singular parts that on the same point was so plunged and gravelled with three lines of Seneca that all our Antidotes drawn from both Scripture and Philosophy could not expel the poyson of his errour There are a set of Heads that can credit the relations of Mariners yet question the Testimonies of St. Paul and peremptorily maintain the traditions of Aelian or Pliny yet in Histories of Scripture raise Queries and Objections believing no more than they can
a possibility of generation and therefore that opinion that Antichrist should be born of the Tribe of * Dan by conjunction with the Divil is ridiculous and a conceit fitter for a Rabbin than a Christian I hold that the Devil doth really possess some men the spirit of Melancholly others the spirit of Delusion others that as the Devil is concealed and denyed by some so God and good Angels are pretended by others whereof the late defection of the Maid of Germany hath left a pregnant example Sect. 31 Again I believe that all that use sorceries incantations and spells are not Witches or as we term them Magicians I conceive there is a traditional Magick not learned immediately from the Devil but at second hand from his Scholars who having once the secret betrayed are able and do emperically practise without his advice they proceeding upon the principles of Nature where actives aptly conjoyned to disposed passives will under any Master produce their effects Thus I think at first a part of Philosophy was Witchcraft which being afterward derived to one another proved but Philosophy and was indeed no more but the honest effects of Nature What invented by us is Philosophy learned from him is Magick We do surely owe the discovery of many secrets to the discovery of good and bad Angels I could never pass that sentence of Paracelsus without an asterisk or annotation Ascendens constellatum multa revelat quaerentibus magnalia naturae i. e. opera Dei I do think that many mysteries ascribed to our own inventions have been the courteous revelations of Spirits for those noble essences in Heaven bear a friendly regard unto their fellow Nature on Earth and therefore believe that those many prodigies and ominous prognosticks which fore-run the ruines of States Princes and private persons are the charitable premonitions of good Angels which more careless enquiries term but the effects of chance and nature Sect. 32 Now besides these particular and divided Spirits there may be for ought I know an universal and common Spirit to the whole World It was the opinion of Plato and it is yet of the Hermetical Philosophers if there be a common nature that unites and tyes the scattered and divided individuals into one species why may there not be one that unites them all However I am sure there is a common Spirit that plays within us yet makes no part in us and that is the Spirit of God the fire and fcintillation of that noble and mighty Essence which is the life and radical heat of spirits and those essences that know not the vertue of the Sun a fire quite contrary to the fire of Hell This is that gentle heat that brooded on the waters and in six days hatched the World this is that irradiation that dispels the mists of Hell the clouds of horrour fear sorrow despair and preserves the region of the mind in serenity whatsoever feels not the warm gale and gentle ventilation of this Spirit though I feel his pulse I dare not say he lives for truely without this to me there is no heat under the Tropick nor any light though I dwelt in the body of the Sun As when the labouring Sun hath wrought his track Vp to the top of lofty Cancers back The ycie Ocean cracks the frozen pole Thaws with the heat of the Celestial coale So when thy absent beams begin t' impart Again a Solstice on my frozen heart My winter's ov'r my drooping spirits sing And every part revives into a Spring But if thy quickning beams a while decline And with their light bless not this Orb of mine A chilly frost surpriseth every member And in the midst of June I feel December O how this earthly temper doth debase The noble Soul in this her humble place Whose wingy nature ever doth aspire To reach that place whence first it took its fire These flames I feel which in my heart do dwell Are not thy beams but take their fire from Hell O quench them all and let thy light divine Be as the Sun to this poor Orb of mine And to thy sacred Spirit convert those fires Whose earthly fumes choak my devout aspires Sect. 33 Therefore for Spirits I am so far from denying their existence that I could easily believe that not onely whole Countries but particular persons have their Tutelary and Guardian Angels * It is not a new opinion of the Church of Rome but an old one of Pythagoras and Plato there is no heresie in it and if not manifestly defin'd in Scripture yet is an opinion of a good and wholesome use in the course and actions of a mans life and would serve as an Hypothesis to salve many doubts whereof common Philosophy affordeth no solution Now if you demand my opinion and Metaphysicks of their natures I confess them very shallow most of them in a negative way like that of God or in a comparative between our selves and fellow-creatures for there is in this Universe a Stair or manifest Scale of creatures rising not disorderly or in confusion but with a comely method and proportion Between creatures of meer existence and things of life there is a large disproportion of nature between plants and animals of creatures of sense a wider difference between them and man a far greater and if the proportion hold one between Man an Angels there should be yet a greater We do not comprehend their natures who retain the first definition of Porphyry and distinguish them from our selves by immortality for before his Fall 't is thought Man also was Immortal yet must we needs affirm that he had a different essence from the Angels having therefore no certain knowledge of their Natures 't is no bad method of the Schools whatsoever perfection we find obscurely in our selves in a more compleat and absolute way to ascribe unto them I believe they have an extemporary knowledge and upon the first motion of their reason do what we cannot without study or deliberation that they know things by their forms and define by specifical difference what we describe by accidents and properties and therefore probabilities to us may be demonstrations unto them that they have knowledge not onely of the specifical but numerical forms of individuals and understand by what reserved difference each single Hypostasis besides the relation to its species becomes its numerical self That as the Soul hath a power to move the body it informs so there 's a faculty to move any though inform none ours upon restraint of time place and distance but that invisible hand that conveyed Habakkuk to the Lyons Den or Philip to Azotus infringeth this rule and hath a secret conveyance wherewith mortality is not acquainted if they have that intuitive knowledge whereby as in reflexion they behold the thoughts of one another I cannot peremptorily deny but they know a great part of ours They that to refute the Invocation of Saints have denied that they have any knowledge of
our affairs below have proceeded too far and must pardon my opinion till I can throughly answer that piece of Scripture At the conversion of a sinner the Angels in Heaven rejoyce * I cannot with those in that great Father securely interpret the work of the first day Fiat lux to the creation of Angels though I confess there is not any creature that hath so neer a glympse of their nature as light in the Sun and Elements We stile it a bare accident but ‖ where it subsists alone 't is a spiritual Substance and may be an Angel in brief conceive light invisible and that is a Spirit Sect. 34 These are certainly the Magisterial and master pieces of the Creator the Flower or as we may say the best part of nothing actually existing what we are but in hopes and probability we are onely that amphibious piece between a corporal and spiritual Essence that middle form that links those two together and makes good the Method of God and Nature that jumps not from extreams but unites the incompatible distances by some middle and participating natures that we are the breath and similitude of God it is indisputable and upon record of holy Scripture but to call our selves a Microcosm or little World I thought it onely a pleasant trope of Rhetorick till my neer judgement and second thoughts told me there was a real truth therein for first we are a rude mass and in the rank of creatures which onely are and have a dull kind of being not yet priviledged with life or preferred to sense or reason next we live the life of Plants the life of Animals the life of Men and at last the life of Spirits running on in one mysterious nature those five kinds of existences which comprehend the creatures not onely of the World but of the Universe thus is man that great and true Amphibium whose nature is disposed to live not onely like other creatures in divers elements but in divided and distinguished worlds for though there be but one to sense there are two to reason the one visible the other invisible whereof Moses seems to have left description and of the other so obscurely that some parts thereof are yet in controversie And truely for the first chapters of Genesis I must confess a great deal of obscurity though Divines have to the power of humane reason endeavoured to make all go in a literal meaning yet those allegorical interpretations are also probable and perhaps the mystical method of Moses bred up in the Hieroglyphical Schools of the Egyptians Now for that immaterial world methinks we need not wander so far as beyond the first moveable for even in this material Fabrick the spirits walk as freely exempt from the affection of time place and motion as beyond the extreamest circumference do but extract from the corpulency of bodies or resolve things beyond their first matter and you discover the habitation of Angels which if I call the ubiquitary and omnipresent essence of God I hope I shall not offend Divinity for before the Creation of the World God was really all things For the Angels he created no new World or determinate mansion and therefore they are everywhere where is his Essence and do live at a distance even in himself That God made all things for man is in some sense true yet not so far as to subordinate the Creation of those purer Creatures unto ours though as ministring Spirits they do and are willing to fulfil the will of God in these lower and sublunary affairs of man God made all things for himself and it is impossible he should make them for any other end than his own Glory it is all he can receive and all that is without himself for honour being an external adjunct and in the honourer rather than in the person honoured it was necessary to make a Creature from whom he might receive his homage and that is in the other world Angels in this Man which when we neglect we forget the very end of our Creation and may justly provoke God not onely to repent that he hath made the World but that he hath sworn he would not destroy it That there is but one World is a conclusion of Faith Aristotle with all his Philosophy hath not been able to prove it and as weakly that the world was eternal that dispute much troubled the Pen of the Philosophers * but Moses decided that question and all is salved with the new term of a Creation that is a production of something out of nothing and what is that Whatsoever is opposite to something or more exactly that which is truely contrary unto God for he onely is all others have an existence with dependency and are sometime but by a distinction and herein is Divinity conformant unto Philosophy and generation not onely founded on contrarieties but also creation God being all things is contrary unto nothing out of which were made all things and so nothing became something and Omniety informed Nullity into an Essence Sect. 36 The whole Creation is a Mystery and particularly that of Man at the blast of his mouth were the rest of the Creatures made and at his bare word they started out of nothing but in the frame of man as the Text describes it he played the sensible operator and seemed not so much to create as make him when he had separated the materials of other creatures there consequently resulted a form and soul but having raised the walls of man he has driven to a second and harder creation of a substance like himself an incorruptible and immortal Soul For these two affections we have the Philosophy and opinion of the Heathens the flat affirmative of Plato and not a negative from Aristotle there is another scruple cast in by Divinity concerning its production much disputed in the Germane auditories and with that indifferency and equality of arguments as leave the controversie undetermined I am not of Paracelsus mind that boldly delivers a receipt to make a man without conjunction yet cannot but wonder at the multitude of heads that do deny traduction having no other argument to confirm their belief then that Rhetorical sentence and Antimetathesis of Augustine Creando infunditur infundendo creatur either opinion will consist well enough with Religion yet I should rather incline to this did not one objection haunt me not wrung from speculations and subtilties but from common sense and observation not pickt from the leaves of any Author but bred amongst the weeds and tares of mine own brain And this is a conclusion from the equivocal and monstrous productions in the copulation of a Man with a Beast for if the Soul of man be not transmitted and transfused in the seed of the Parents why are not those productions meerly beasts but have also an impression and tincture of reason in as high a measure as it can evidence it self in those improper Organs Nor truely can I peremptorily deny
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
would still be nearer him United souls are not satisfied with imbraces but desire to be truly each other which being impossible their desires are infinite and proceed without a possibility of satisfaction Another misery there is in affection that whom we truly love like our own we forget their looks nor can our memory retain the Idea of their faces and it is no wonder for they are our selves and our affection makes their looks our own This noble affection falls not on vulgar and common constitutions but on such as are mark'd for virtue he that can love his friend with this noble ardour will in a competent degree effect all Now if we can bring our affections to look beyond the body and cast an eye upon the soul we have found out the true object not only of friendship but Charity and the greatest happiness that we can bequeath the soul is that wherein we all do place our last felicity Salvation which though it be not in our power to bestow it is in our charity and pious invocations to desire if not procure and further I cannot contentedly frame a prayer for my self in particular without a catalogue for my friends nor request a happiness wherein my sociable disposition doth not desire the fellowship of my neighbour I never hear the Toll of a passing Bell though in my mirth without my prayers and best wishes for the departing spirit I cannot go to cure the body of my patient but I forget my profession and call unto God for his soul I cannot see one say his prayers but in stead of imitating him I fall into a supplication for him who perhaps is no more to me than a common nature and if God hath vouchsafed an ear to my supplications there are surely many happy that never saw me and enjoy the blessing of mine unknown devotions To pray for Enemies that is for their salvation is no harsh precept but the practice of our daily and ordinary devotions * I cannot believe the story of the Italian our bad wishes and uncharitable desires proceed no further than this life it is the Devil and the uncharitable votes of Hell that desire our misery in the World to come Sect. 7 To do no injury nor take none was a principle which to my former years and impatient affections seemed to contain enough of Morality but my more setled years and Christian constitution have fallen upon severer resolutions I can hold there is no such thing as injury that if there be there is no such injury as revenge and no such revenge as the contempt of an injury that to hate another is to malign himself that the truest way to love another is to despise our selves I were unjust unto mine own Conscience if I should say I am at variance with any thing like my self I find there are many pieces in this one fabrick of man this frame is raised upon a mass of Antipathies I am one methinks but as the World wherein notwithstanding there are a swarm of distinct essences and in them another World of contrarieties we carry private and domestick enemies within publick and more hostile adversaries without The Devil that did but buffet St. Paul plays methinks at sharp with me Let me be nothing if within the compass of my self I do not find the battail of Lepanto Passion against Reason Reason against Faith Faith against the Devil and my Conscience against all There is another man within me that 's angry with me rebukes commands and dastards me I have no Conscience of Marble to resist the hammer of more heavy offences nor yet too soft and waxen as to take the impression of each single peccadillo or scape of infirmity I am of a strange belief that it is as easie to be forgiven some sins as to commit some others Eor my Original sin I hold it to be washed away in my Baptism for my actual transgressions I compute and reckon with God but from my last repentance Sacrament or general absolution and therefore am not terrified with the sins or madness of my youth I thank the goodness of God * I have no sins that want a name I am not singular in offences my transgressions are Epidemical and from the common breath of our corruption For there are certain tempers of body which matcht with an humorous depravity of mind do hatch and produce vitiosities whose newness and monstrosity of nature admits no name ‖ this was the temper of that Lecher that carnal'd with a Statua * and constitution of Nero in his Spintrian recreations For the Heavens are not only fruitful in new and unheard-of stars the Earth in plants and animals but mens minds also in villany and vices now the dulness of my reason and the vulgarity of my disposition never prompted my invention nor sollicited my affection unto any of those yet even those common and quotidian infirmities that so necessarily attend me and do seem to be my very nature have so dejected me so broken the estimation that I should have otherwise of my self that I repute my self the most abjectest piece of mortality Divines prescribe a fit of sorrow to repentance there goes indignation anger sorrow hatred into mine passions of a contrary nature which neither seem to sute with this action nor my proper constitution It is no breach of charity to our selves to be at variance with our Vices nor to abhor that part of us which is an enemy to the ground of charity our God wherein we do but imitate our great selves the world whose divided Antipathies and contrary faces do yet carry a charitable regard unto the whole by their particular discords preserving the common harmony and keeping in fetters those powers whose rebellions once Masters might be the ruine of all Sect. 8 I thank God amongst those millions of Vices I do inherit and hold from Adam I have escaped one and that a mortal enemy to Charity the first and farther-sin not onely of man but of the devil Pride a vice whose name is comprehended in a Monosyllable but in its nature not circumscribed with a World I have escaped it in a condition that can hardly avoid it Those petty acquisitions and reputed perfections that advance and elevate the conceits of other men add no feathers unto mine * I have seen a Grammarian towr and plume himself over a single line in Horace and shew more pride in the construction of one Ode than the Author in the composure of the whole book For my own part besides the Jargon and Patois of several Provinces I understand no less than six Languages yet I protest I have no higher conceit of my self than had our Fathers before the consusion of Babel when there was but one Language in the World and none to boast himself either Linguist or Critick I have not onely seen several Countries beheld the nature of their Climes the Chorography of their Provinces Topography of their Cities but understood their several
nothing of the Sin against the Holy Ghost whose cure not onely but whose nature is unknown I can cure the Gout or Stone in some sooner than Divinity Pride or Avarice in others I can cure Vices by Physick when they remain incurable by Divinity and shall obey my Pills when they contemn their precepts I boast nothing but plainly say we all labour against our own cure for death is the cure of all diseases There is no Catholicon or universal remedy I know but this which though nauseous to queasie stomacks yet to prepared appetites is Nectar and a pleasant potion of immortality Sect. 10 For my Conversation it is like the Sun 's with all men and with a friendly aspect to good and bad Methinks there is no man bad and the worst best that is while they are kept within the circle of those qualities wherein they are good there is no mans mind of such discordant and jarring a temper to which a tunable disposition may not strike a harmony Magnae virtutes nec minora vitia it is the posie of the best natures * and may be inverted on the worst there are in the most depraved and venemous dispositions certain pieces that remain untoucht which by an Antiperistasis become more excellent or by the excellency of their antipathies are able to preserve themselves from the contagion of their enemy vices and persist intire beyond the general corruption For it is also thus in nature The greatest Balsomes do lie enveloped in the bodies of most powerful Corrosives I say moreover and I ground upon experience * that poisons contain within themselves their own Antidote and that which preserves them from the venome of themselves without which they were not deleterious to others onely but to themselves also But it is the corruption that I fear within me not the contagion of commerce without me 'T is that unruly regiment within me that will destroy me 't is I that do infect my self ‖ the man without a Navel yet lives in me I feel that original canker corrode and devour me and therefore Defenda me Dios de me Lord deliver me from my self is a part of my Letany and the first voice of my retired imaginations There is no man alone because every man is a Microcosm and carries the whole World about him Nunquam minus solus quà m cum solus though it be the Apothegme of a wise man is yet true in the mouth of a fool indeed though in a Wilderness a man is never alone not only because he is with himself and his own thoughts but because he is with the Devil who ever consorts with our solitude and is that unruly rebel that musters up those disordered motions which accompany our sequestred imaginations And to speak more narrowly there is no such thing as solitude nor any thing that can be said to be alone and by it self but God who is his own circle and can subsist by himself all others besides their dissimilary and Heterogeneous parts which in a manner multiply their natures cannot subsist without the concourse of God and the society of that hand which doth uphold their natures In brief there can be nothing truly alone and by its self which is not truly one and such is only God All others do transcend an unity and so by consequence are many Sect. 11 Now for my life it is a miracle of thirty years which to relate were not a History but a piece of Poetry and would sound to common ears like a Fable for the World I count it not an Inn but an Hospital and a place not to live but to dye in The world that I regard is my self it is the Microcosm of my own frame that I cast mine eye on for the other I use it but like my Globe and turn it round sometimes for my recreation Men that look upon my outside perusing only my condition and Fortunes do err in my Altitude for I am above Atlas his shoulders The earth is a point not only in respect of the Heavens above us but of that heavenly and celestial part within us that mass of Flesh that circumscribes me limits not my mind that surface that tells the Heavens it hath an end cannot perswade me I have any I take my circle to be above three hundred and sixty though the number of the Ark do measure my body it comprehendeth not my mind whilst I study to find how I am a Microcosm or little World I find my self something more than the great There is surely a piece of Divinity in us something that was before the Elements and owes no homage unto the Sun Nature tells me I am the Image of God as well as Scripture he that understands not thus much hath not his introduction or first lesson and is yet to begin the Alphabet of man Let me not injure the felicity of others if I say I am as happy as any Ruat coelum Fiat voluntas tua salveth all so that whatsoever happens it is but what our daily prayers desire In brief I am content and what should providence add more Surely this is it we call Happiness and this do I enjoy with this I am happy in a dream and as content to enjoy a happiness in a fancy as others in a more apparent truth and realty There is surely a neerer apprehension of any thing that delights us in our dreams than in our waked senses without this I were unhappy for my awaked judgment discontents me ever whispering unto me that I am from my friend but my friendly dreams in night requite me and make me think I am within his arms I thank God for my happy dreams as I do for my good rest for there is a satisfaction unto reasonable desires and such as can be content with a fit of happiness And surely it is not a melancholy conceit to think we are all asleep in this World and that the conceits of this life are as meer dreams to those of the next as the Phantasms of the night to the conceits of the day There is an equal delusion in both and the one doth but seem to be the embleme or picture of the other we are somewhat more than our selves in our sleeps and the slumber of the body seems to be but the waking of the soul It is the ligation of sense but the liberty of reason and our waking conceptions do not match the Fancies of our sleeps At my Nativity my Ascendant was the watery sign of Scorpius I was born in the Planetary hour of Saturn and I think I have a piece of that Leaden Planet in me I am no way facetious nor disposed for the mirth and galliardize of company yet in one dream I can compose a whole Comedy behold the action apprehend the justs and laugh my self awake at the conceits thereof were my memory as faithful as my reason is then fruitful I would never study but in my dreams and this time also would
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
sunt inter Haereticos deputandi Aug. cont Manich. 24. qu. 3. Sect. 9 Pag. 16 The deepest mysteries that ours contains have not only been illustrated but maintained by Syllogism and the Rule of Reason and since this Book was written by Mr. White in his Institutiones Sacrae And when they have seen the Red Sea doubt not of the Miracle Those that have seen it have been better informed than Sir Henry Blount was for he tells us That he desired to view the passage of Moses into the Red Sea not being above three days journey off but the Jews told him the precise place was not known within less than the space of a days journey along the shore wherefore saith he I left that as too uncertain for any Observation In his Voyage into the Levant Sect. 10 Pag. 19 I had as lieve you tell me that Anima est Angelus hominis est corpus Dei as Entelechia Lux est umbra Dei as actus perspoicui Great variety of opinion there hath been amongst the Ancient Philosophers touching the definition of the Soul Thales his was that it is a Nature without Repose Asclepiades that it is an Exercitation of Sense Hesiod that it is a thing composed of Earth and Water Parmenides holds of Earth and Fire Galen that it is Heat Hippocrates that it is a spirit diffused through the body Some others have held it to be Light Plato saith 't is a Substance moving it self and after him cometh Aristotle whom the Author here reproveth and goeth a degree farther and saith it is Entelechia that is that which naturally makes the body to move But this definition is as rigid as any of the other for this tells us not what the essence origine or nature of the soul is hut only marks an effect of it and therefore signifieth no more than if he had said as the Author's Phrase is that it is Angelus hominis or an Intelligence that moveth man as he supposed those other to do the Heavens Now to come to the definition of Light in which the Author is also unsatisfied with the School of Aristotle he saith It satisfieth him no more to tell him that Lux est actus perspicui than if you should tell him that it is umbra Dei The ground of this definition given by the Peripateticks is taken from a passage in Aristot de anima l. 2. cap. 7. where Aristtotle saith That the colour of the thing seen doth move that which is perspicuum actu i.e. illustratam naturam quae sit in aere aliove corpore transparente and that that in regard of its continuation to the eye moveth the eye and by its help the internal sensorium and that so vision is perform'd Now as it is true that the Sectators of Aristotle are too blame by fastening up on-him by occasion of this passage that he meant that those things that made this impress upon the Organs are meer accidents and have nothing of substance which is more than ever he meant and cannot be maintained without violence to Reason and his own Principles so for Aristotle himself no man is beholden to him for any Science acquir'd by this definition for what is any man the near for his telling him that Colour admitting it to be a body as indeed it is and in that place he doth not deny doth move actu perspicuum when as the perspicuity is in relation to the eye and he doth not say how it comes to be perspicuous which is the thing enquired after but gives it that denomination before the eye hath perform'd its office so that if he had said it had been umbra Dei it would have been as intelligible as what he hath said He that would be satisfied how Vision is perform'd let him see Mr. Hobbs in Tract de nat human cap. 2. For God had not caused it to rain upon the Earth St. Aug. de Genes ad literam cap. 5. 6. salves that expression from any inconvenience but the Author in Pseudodox Epidemic l. 7. cap. 1. shews that we have no reason to be confident that this fruit was an Apple I believe that the Serpent if we shall literally understand it from his proper form and figure made his motion on his belly before the curse Yet the Author himself sheweth in Pseudodox Epidemic lib. 7 cap 1. that the form or kind of this Serpent is not agreed on yet Comestor affirm'd it was a Dragon Eugubinus a Basilisk Delrio a Viper and others a common Snake but of what kind soever it was he sheweth in the same Volume lib. 5. c. 4. that there was no inconvenience that the Temptation should be perform'd in his proper shape I find the tryal of the Pucelage and virginity of Women which God ordained the Jews is very fallible Locus extat Deut. c. 22. the same is affirm'd by Laurentius in his Anatom Whole Nations have escaped the curse of Child-birth which God seems to pronounce upon the whole sex This is attested by Mr. Montaign Les doleurs de l'enfantiment par les medicines pardein mosme estimles grandes quae nous pasons avec tant de Cetemonies ily a des notions entieres qui ne'n fuit mul conte l. 1. des Ess c. 14. Sect. 11 Pag. 21 Who can speak of Eternity without a Soloecism or think thereof without an Extasie Time we may comprehend c. Touching the difference betwixt Eternity and Time there have been great disputes amongst Philosophers some affirming it to be no more than duration perpetual consisting of parts and others to which opinion it appears by what follows in this Section the Author adheres affirmed to use the Author's phrase that it hath no distinction of Tenses but is according to Boetius lib. 5. consol pros 6. his definition interminabilis vitae tota simul perfecta possessio For me Non nostrum est tantas componere lites I shall only observe what each of them hath to say against the other Say those of the first opinion against those that follow Boetius his definition That definition was taken by Boetius out of Plato's Timaeus and is otherwise applyed though hot by Boetius yet by those that follow him than ever Plato intended it for he did not take it in the Abstract but in the Concrete for an eternal thing a Divine substance by which he meant God or his Anima mundi and this he did to the intent to establish this truth That no mutation can befal the Divine Majesty as it doth to things subject to generation and corruption and that Plato there intended not to define or describe any species of duration and they say that it is impossible to understand any such species of duration that is according to the Author's expression but one permanent point Now that which those that follow Boetius urge against the other definition is they say it doth not at all difference Eternity from the nature of Time for they say if it be composed
of many Nunc's or many instants by the addition of one more it is still encreased and by that means Infinity or Eternity is not included nor ought more than Time For this see Mr. White de dial mundo Dial. 3. Nod. 4. Indeed he only is c. This the Author infers from the words of God to Moses I am that I am and this to distinguish him from all others who he saith have and shall be but those that are learned in the Hebrew affirm that the words in that place Exod. 3. do not signifie Ego sum qui sum qui est c. but Ero qui ero qui erit c. vid. Gassend in animad Epicur Physiolog I wonder how Aristotle could conceive the World Eternal or how he could make two Eternities that is that God and the World both were eternal I wonder more at either the ignorance or incogitancy of the Conimbricenses who in their Comment upon the eighth Book of Aristotle's Physicks treating of the matter of Creation when they had first said that it was possible to know it and that actually it was known for Aristotle knew it yet for all this they afterwards affirm That considering onely the light of Nature there is nothing can be brought to demonstrate Creation and yet farther when they had defined Creation to be the production of a thing ex nihhilo and had proved that the world was so created in time and refused the arguments of the Philosophers to the contrary they added this That the World might be created ab aeterno for having propos'd this question Num aliquid à Deo ex Aeternitate procreari potuit they defend the affirmative and assert That not onely incorporeal substances as Angels or permanent as the celestial Bodies or corruptible as Men c. might be produced and made ab aeterno and be conserved by an infinite time ex utraque parte and that this is neither repugnant to God the Creator the things created nor to the nature of Creation for proof whereof they bring instances of the Sun which if it had been eternal had illuminated eternally and the virtue of God is not less than the virtue of the Sun Another instance they bring of the divine Word which was produc'd ab aeterno in which discourse and in the instances brought to maintain it it is hard to say whether the madness or impiety be greater and certainly if Christians thus argue we have the more reason to pardon the poor Heathen Aristotle There is not three but a Trinity of Souls The Peripatetiques held that men had three distinct Souls whom the Hereticks the Anomaei and the Jacobites followed There arose a great dispute about this matter in Oxford in the year 1276 and it was then determined against Aristotle Daneus Christ Eth. l. 1. c. 4. and Suarez in his Treatise de causa formali Quaest An dentur plures formae in uno composito affirmeth there was a Synod that did anathematize all that held with Aristotle in this point Sect. 14 Pag. 18 There is but one first and four second Causes in all things In that he saith there is but one first cause he speaketh in opposition to the Manichees who held there were Duo principia one from whom came all good and the other from whom came all evil the reason of Protagoras did it seems impose upon their understandings he was wont to say Si Deus non est unde igitur bona Si autem est unde mala In that that he saith there are but four second causes he opposeth Plato who to the four causes material efficient formal and final adds for a fifth exemplar or Idaea sc Id ad quod respiciens artifex id quod destinabat efficit according to whose mind Boetius speaks lib. 3. mot 9. de conf Philosoph O qui perpetua mundum ratione gubernaâ— Terrarum Coelique sator qui tempus ab aevo Ire jubes stabilisque manens das cuncta moveriâ— Quem non externae pepulerunt fingere causae Materiae fluitantis opus verum insita sumâ— Forma boni livore carens tu cuncta supera Ducis ab exemplo pulchrum pulcherrimus ipse Mundum mente gerens similique in imagiâ— formans Perfectasque jubens perfectum absolvere partâ—â— And St. Augustine l. 83. quaest 46 where amongst other he hath these words Restat ergo ut omnia Ration sint condita nec eadem ratione hoâ—â— qua equus hoc enim absurdum est existimare singula autem propriis sunt creata rationibus But these Plato's Scholar Aristotle would not allow to make or constitute a different sort of cause from the formal or efficient to which purpose he disputes l. 7. Metaphysic but he and his Sectators and the Romists also agree as the Author that there are but the four remembred causes so that the Author in affirming there are but four hath no adversary but the Platonists but yet in asserting there are four as his words imply there are that oppose him and the Schools of Aristot and Ramus I shall bring for instance Mr. Nat. Carpenter who in his Philosophia libera affirmeth there is no such cause as that which they call the Final cause he argueth thus Every cause hath an influence upon its effect but so has not the End therefore it is not a Cause The major Proposition he saith is evident because the influence of a cause upon its effect is either the causality it self or something that is necessarily conjoyned to it and the minor as plain for either the End hath an influence upon the effect immediately or mediately by stirring up the Efficient to operate not immediately because so it should enter either the constitution or production or conservation of the things but the constitution it cannot enter because the constitution is onely of matter and form nor the Production for so it should concur to the production either as it is simply the end or as an exciter of the Efficient but not simply as the end because the end as end doth not go before but followeth the thing produced and therefore doth not concur to its production if they say it doth so far concur as it is desired of the agent or efficient cause it should not so have an immediate influence upon the effect but should onely first move the efficient Lastly saith he it doth not enter the conservation of a thing because a thing is often conserved when it is frustrate of its due end as when it s converted to a new use and end Divers other arguments he hath to prove there is no such cause as the final cause Nat. Carpenter Philosop liber Decad. 3. Exercitat 5. But for all this the Author and he differ not in substance for 't is not the Author's intention to assert that the end is in nature praeexistent to the effect but only that whatsoever God has made he hath made to some end or other which he doth to
give me leave to observe what our Country-man Roger Bacon did long ago That those Students who busie themselves much with such Notions as reside wholly to the fantasie do hardly ever become Idoneous for abstracted Metaphysical Speculations the one having bulkie Foundation of Matter or of the Accidents of it to settle upon at the least with one foot The other flying continually even to a lessening pitch in the subtil Air. And accordingly it hath been generally noted That the exactest Mathematicians who converse altogether with Lines Figures and other Differences of Quantity have seldom proved eminent in Metaphysicks or Speculative Divinity Nor again the Professors of these Sciences in the other Arts. Much less can it be expected that an excellent Physician whose fancy is alwayes fraught with the material Drugs that he prescribeth his Apothecary to compound his Medicines of and whose hands are inured to the cutting up and eyes to the inspection of Anatomized Bodies should easily and with success flie his thoughts at so towring a Game as a pure Intellect a separated and unbodied Soul Surely this acute Author 's sharp wit had he orderly applied his Studies that way would have been able to satisfie himself with less labour and others with more plenitude than it hath been the Lot of so dull a brain as mine concerning the Immortality of the Soul And yet I assure you my Lord the little Philosophy that is allowed me for my share demonstrateth this Proposition to me as well as Faith delivereth it which our Physician will not admit in his To make good this Assertion here were very unreasonable since that to do it exactly and without exactness it were not demonstration requireth a total Survey of the whole Science of Bodies and of all the operations that we are conversant with of a rational Creature which I having done with all the succinctness I have been able to explicate so knotty a subject with hath taken me up in the first draught neer two hundred sheets of Paper I shall therefore take leave of this Point with only this Note That I take the Immortality of the Soul under his favour to be of that nature that to them onely that are not versed in the ways of proving it by Reason it is an Article of Faith to others it is an evident Conclusion of demonstrative Science And with a like short Note I shall observe how if he had traced the Nature of the Soul from its first principles he could not have suspected it should sleep in the Grave 'till the Resurrection of the Body Nor would he have permitted his compassionative Nature to imagin it belonged to God's mercy as the Chiliasts did to change its condition in those that are damned from pain to happiness For where God should have done that he must have made that anguished Soul another creature than what it was as to make fire cease from being hot requireth to have it become another thing than the Element of fire since that to be in such a condition as maketh us understand damned souls miserable is a necessary effect of the temper it is in when it goeth out of the Body and must necessarily out of its Nature remain in unvariably for all Eternity Though for the Conceptions of the vulgar part of Mankind who are not capable of such abstruse Nations it be styled and truely too the sentence and punishment of a severe Judge I am extreemly pleased with him when he saith There are not Impossibilities enough in Religion for an Active Faith And no whit less when in Philosophy he will not be satisfied with such naked terms as in Schools use to be obtruded upon easie minds when the Master's fingers are not strong enough to untie the Knots proposed unto them I confess when I enquire what Light to use our Author's Example is I should be as well contented with his silence as with his telling me it is Actus perspicui unless he explicate clearly to me what those words mean which I find very few go about to do Such meat they swallow whole and eject it as entire But were such things Scientifically and Methodically declared they would be of extream Satisfaction and Delight And that work taketh up the greatest part of my formerly-mentioned Treatise For I endeavour to shew by a continued Progress and not by Leaps all the Motions of Nature and unto them to fit intelligibly the terms used by her best Secretaries whereby all wilde fantastick Qualities and Moods introduced for refuges of Ignorance are banished from Commerce In the next place my Lord I shall suspect that our Author hath not pennetrated into the bottom of those Conceptions that deep Scholars have taught us of Eternity Me thinketh he taketh it for an infinite Extension of time and a never ending Revolution of continual succession which is no more like Eternity than a gross Body is like a pure Spirit Nay such an Infinity of Revolutions is demonstrable to be a Contradiction and impossible In the state of Eternity there is no Succession no Change no Variety Souls or Angels in that condition do not so much as change a thought All things notions and actions that ever were are or shall be in any creature are actually present to such an Intellect And this my Lord I aver not as deriving it from Theology and having recourse to beatifick Vision to make good my Tenet for so onely glorified creatures should enjoy such immense knowledge but out of the principles of Nature and Reason and from thence shall demonstrate it to belong to the lowest Soul of the ignorantest wretch whilst he lived in this world since damned in Hell A bold undertaking you will say But I confidently engage my self to it Upon this occasion occurreth also a great deal to be said of the nature of Predestination which by the short touches our Author giveth of it I doubt he quite mistakes and how it is an unalterable Series and Chain of Causes producing infallible and in respect of them necessary Effects But that is too large a Theam to unfold here too vast an Ocean to describe in the scant Map of a Letter And therefore I will refer that to a fitter opportunity fearing I have already too much trespassed upon your Lordship's patience but that indeed I hope you have not had enough to read thus far I am sure my Lord that you who never forgot any thing which deserved a room in your memory do remember how we are told that Abyssus abyssum invocat so here our Author from the Abyss of Predestination falleth into that of the Trinity of Persons consistent with the Indivisibility of the Divine Nature And out of that if I be not exceedingly deceived into a third of mistaking when he goeth about to illustrate this admirable Mystery by a wild discourse of a Trinity in our Souls The dint of Wit is not forcible enough to dissect such tough Matter wherein all the obscure glimmering we gain of that
and their regularly-irregular Motions sprung from the same root And a like Inanity I should suspect in Chiromancy as well as Astrologie especially in particular contingent Effects however our Author and no less a man than Aristotle seem to attribute somewhat more to that conjectural Art of Lines I should much doubt though our Author sheweth himself of another mind that Bernardinus Ochinâ—s grew at the last to be a meer Atheist When after having been first the Institutor and Patriarch of the Capucine-Order so violent was his Zeal then as no former religious Institution though never so rigorous was strict enough for him he from thence fell to be first an Heretick then a Jew and after a while became a Turk and at the last wrote a furious Invective against those whom he called the three Grand Impostors of the World among whom he ranked our Saviour Christ as well as Moses and Mahomet I doubt he mistakes in his Chronologie or the Printer in the name when he maketh Ptolomy condemn the Alchoran He needeth not be so scrupulous as he seemeth to be in averring down-rightly That God cannot do contradictory things though peradventure it is not amiss to sweeten the manner of the expression and the sound of the words for who understandeth the nature of contradiction will find Non-Entity in one of the terms which of God were impiety not to deny peremptorily For he being in his proper Nature Self-Entity all Being must immediately flow from him and all Not-Being be totally excluded from that Efflux Now for the recalling of Time past which the Angels posed Esdras withal there is no contradiction in that as is evident to them that know the essence of Time For it is but putting again all things that had motion into the same state they were in at that moment unto which time was to be reduced back and from thence letting it travel on again by the same motion and upon the same wheels it rouled upon before And therefore God could do this admirable Work though neither Esdras nor all the power of Creatures together could do it And consequently it cannot in this Question be said that he posed Mortality with what himself was not able to perform I acknowledge ingenuously our Physician 's experience hath the advantage of my Philosophy in knowing there are Witches Yet I am sure I have no temptation to doubt of the Deity nor have any unsatisfaction in believing there are Spirits I do not see such a necessary conjunction between them as that the supposition of the one must needs infer the other Neither do I deny there are Witches I only reserve my Assent till I meet with stronger motives to carry it And I confess I doubt as much of the efficacy of those Magical Rules he speaketh of as also of the finding out of Mysteries by the courteous Revelation of Spirits I doubt his Discourse of an Vniversal Spirit is but a wild Fancy and that in the marshalling of it he mistaketh the Hermetical Philosophers And surely it is a weak argument from a common nature that subsisteth only in our understanding out of which it hath no being at all to infer by parity an actual Subsistence or the like in reality of nature of which kind of miscarriage in mens discoursings I have spoken before And upon this occasion I do not see how seasonably he falleth of a sudden from natural Speculations to a Moral Contemplation of Gods Spirit working in us In which also I would enquire especially upon his sudden Poetical rapture whether the Solidity of the Judgement be not out-weighed by the airiness of the Fancy Assuredly one cannot err in taking this Author for a very fine ingenious Gentleman But for how deep a Scholar I leave unto them to judge that are abler than I am If he had applied himself with earnest study and upon right grounds to search out the Nature of pure Intellects I doubt not but his great Parts would have argued more efficaciously than he doth against those that between Men and Angels put only Porphyrie ' difference of Mortality and Immortality And he would have dived further into the tenour of their Intellectual Operations in which there is no Succession nor ratiocinative Discourse for in the very first instant of their Creation they actually knew all that they were capable of knowing and they are acquainted even with all free thoughts past present and to come for they see them in their causes and they see them all together at one instant as I have in my fore-mentioned Treatise proved at large And I think I have already touched thus much once before in this Letter I am tempted here to say a great deal concerning Light by his taking it to be a bare Quality For in Physicks no Speculation is more useful or reacheth further But to set down such Phaenomena's of it as I have observed and from whence I evidently collect the Nature of it were too large a Theam for this place When your Lordship pleaseth I shall shew you another more orderly Discourse upon that Subject wherein I have sufficiently proved it to be a solid Substance and Body In his proceeding to collect an Intellectual World and in his discoursing upon the place and habitation of Angels as also in his consideration of the activity of glorified Eyes which shall be in the state of rest whereas motion is required to seeing and in his subtil Speculation upon two Bodies placed in the Vacuity beyond the utmost all-enclosing Superficie of Heaven which implieth a Contradiction in Nature methinks I hear Apelles cry out Ne sutor ultra Crepidam or rather it putteth me in mind of one of the Titles in Pantagruel's Library which he expresseth himself conversant in namely Quaestio subtilissima utrum Chimaera in vacuo bombinans possit comedere Secundas intentiones with which short Note I will leave these Considerations in which if time and other circumstances allowed it matter would spring up of excellent Learning When our Author shall have read Mr. Whites Dialogue of the World he will no longer be of the Opinion That the Unity of the World is a conclusion of Faith For it is there demonstrated by Reason Here the thread of the Discourse inviteth me to say a great deal of the Production or Creation of Mans Soul But it is too tedious and too knotty a piece for a Letter Now it shall suffice to note that it is not Ex traduce and yet hath a strange kind of near dependance of the Body which is as it were Gods instrument to create it by This thus said or rather tumbled out may seem harsh But had your Lordship leisure to peruse what I have written at full upon this Point I doubt not but it would appear plausible enough to you I cannot agree with him when he seemeth to impute Inconvenience to long Life and that length of time doth rather impair than improve us For surely if we will follow the
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