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
Divine Charity He will have it to be a general way of doing good It is true he addeth then for God's sake but he allayeth that again with saying he will have that good done as by Obedience and to accomplish God's will and looketh at the Effects it worketh upon our Souls but in a narrow compass like one in the vulgar throng that considereth God as a Judge and as a Rewarder or a Punisher Whereas perfect Charity is that vehement Love of God for his own sake for his Goodness for his Beauty for his Excellency that carrieth all the motions of our Soul directly and violently to Him and maketh a man disdain or rather hate all obstacles that may retard his journey to Him And that Face of it that looketh toward Mankind with whom we live and warmeth us to do others good is but like the overflowing of the main Stream that swelling above its Banks runneth over in a multitude of little channels I am not satisfied that in the Likeness which he putteth between God and Man he maketh the difference between them to be but such as between two Creatures that resemble one another For between these there is some proportion but between the others none at all In the examining of which Discourse wherein the Author observeth that no two Faces are ever seen to be perfectly alike nay no two Pictures of the same Face were exactly made so I could take occasion to insert a subtil and delightful Demonstration of Mr. Whites wherein he sheweth how it is impossible that two Bodies for example two Bouls should ever be made exactly like one another nay not rigorously equal in any one Accident as namely in weight but that still there will be some little difference and inequality between them the Reason of which Observation our Author medled not with were it not that I have been so long already as Digressions were now very unseasonable Shall I commend or censure our Author for believing so well of his acquired knowledge as to be dejected at the thought of not being able to leave it a Legacy among his Friends Or shall I examine whether it be not a high injury to wise and gallant Princes who out of the generousness and nobleness of their Nature do patronize Arts and learned Men to impute their so doing to vanity of desiring Praise or to fear of Reproach But let these pass I will not engage any that may be-friend him in a quarrel against him But I may safely produce Epictetus to contradict him when he letteth his kindness engulf him in deep afflictions for a friend For he will not allow his wise man to have an inward relenting a troubled feeling or compassion of anothers misfortunes That disordereth the one without any good to the other Let him afford all the assistances and relievings in his power but without intermingling himself in others Woe As Angels that do us good but have no passion for us But this Gentleman's kindness goeth yet further he compareth his love of a Friend to his love of God the Union of Friends Souls by affection to the Union of the three Persons in the Trinity and to the Hypostatical Vnion of two Natures in one Christ by the Words Incarnation Most certainly he expresseth himself to be a right good-natur'd man But if St. Augustine retracted so severely his pathetical Expressions for the Death of his Friend saying They savoured more of the Rhetorical Declamations of a young Orator than of the grave Confession of a devout Christian or somewhat to that purpose What censure upon himself may we expect of our Physician if ever he make any Retraction of this Discourse concerning his Religion It is no small misfortune to him that after so much time spent and so many places visited in a curious Search by travelling after the Acquisition of so many Languages after the wading so deep in Sciences as appeareth by the ample Inventory and Particular he maketh of himself The result of all this should be to profess ingenuously he had studied enough onely to become a Sceptick and that having run through all sorts of Learning he could find rest and satisfaction in none This I confess is the unlucky fate of those that light upon wrong Principles But Mr. White teacheth us how the Theorems and Demonstrations of Physicks may be linked and chained together as strongly and as continuedly as they are in the Mathematicks if men would but apply themselves to a right Method of Study And I do not find that Solomon complained of Ignorance in the height of Knowledge as this Gentleman saith but onely that after he hath rather acknowledged himself ignorant of nothing but that he understood the Natures of all Plants from the Cedar to the Hyssop and was acquainted with all the ways and paths of Wisdom and Knowledge he exclaimeth that all this is but Toyl and vexation of spirit and therefore adviseth men to change Humane Studies into Divine Contemplations and Affections I cannot agree to his resolution of shutting his Books and giving over the search of Knowledge and resigning himself up to Ignorance upon the reason that moveth him as though it were extream Vanity to waste our days in the pursuit of that which by attending but a little longer till Death hath closed the eyes of our Body to open those of our Soul we shall gain with ease we shall enjoy by infusion and is an accessory of our Glorification It is true as soon as Death hath played the Midwife to our second Birth our Soul shall then see all Truths more freely than our Corporal Eyes at our first Birth see all Bodies and Colours by the natural power of it as I have touched already and not onely upon the grounds our Author giveth Yet far be it from us to think that time lost which in the mean season we shall laboriously imploy to warm our selves with blowing a few little Sparks of that glorious fire which we shall afterwards in one instant leap into the middle of without danger of Scorching And that for two important Reasons besides several others too long to mention here the one for the great advantage we have by Learning in this life the other for the huge Contentment that the Acquisition of it here which applyeth a strong Affection to it will be unto us in the next life The want of Knowledge in our first Mother which exposed her to be easily deceived by the Sepents cunning was the root of all our ensuing Misery and Woe It is as true which we are taught by irrefragable Authority That Omnis peccans ignorat And the well head of all the calamities and mischiefs in all the World consisteth of the troubled and bitter waters of Ignorance Folly and Rashness to cure which the onely Remedy and Antidote is the Salt of true Learning the bitter Wood of Study painful Meditation and orderly Consideration I do not mean such Study as armeth wrangling Champions for clamorous Schools
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
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
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
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
sweat and affected with this dream I rose and wrote the day and hour and all circumstances thereof in a Paper book which book with many other things I put into a Barrel and sent it from Prague to Stode thence to be conveyed into England And now being at Nurenburgh a Merchant of a noble Family well acquainted with me and my friends arrived there who told me my Father dyed some two months ago I list not to write any lyes but that which I write is as true as strange When I returned into England some four years after I would not open the Barrel I sent from Prague nor look into the Paper book in which I had written this dream till I had called my Sisters and some friends to be witnesses where my self and they were astonished to see my written dream answer the very day of my Father's death I may lawfully swear that which my Kinsman hath heard witnessed by my brother Henry whilst he lived that in my youth at Cambridge I had the like dream of my Mother's death where my brother Henry living with me early in the morning I dreamed that my Mother passed by with a sad countenance and told me that she could not come to my Commencement I being within five months to proceed Master of Arts and she having promised at that time to come to Cambridge And when I related this dream to my brother both of us awaking together in a sweat he protested to me that he had dreamed the very same and when we had not the least knowledge of our Mothers sickness neither in our youthful affections were any whit affected with the strangeness of this dream yet the next Carrier brought us word of our Mothers death Mr. Fiennes Morison in his Itinerary I am not over credulous of such relations but me thinks the circumstance of publishing it at such a time when there were those living that might have disprov'd it if it had been false is a great argument of the truth of it Sect. 12 Pag. 166 I wonder the fancy of Lucan and Seneca did not discover it Eor they had both power from Nero to chuse their deaths Sect. 13 Pag. 169 To conceive our selves Vrinals is not so ridiculous Reperti sunt Galeno Avicenna testibus qui se vasa fictilia crederent idcirco hominum attactum ne confringerentur solicite fugerent Pontan in Attic. bellar Hist 22. Which proceeds from extremity of melancholy Aristot is too severe that will not allow us to be truely liberal without wealth Aristot l. 1. Ethic. c. 8. Sect. 15 Pag. 174 Thy will be done though in mine own undoing This should be the wish of every man and is of the most wise and knowing Le Christien plus humble plus sage meux recognoissant que c'est que de lay se rapporte a son createur de choisir ordonner ce qu'el luy faqt Il ne le supplie dautre chose que sa volunte sort faite Montaign FINIS OBSERVATIONS UPON RELIGIO MEDICI Occasionally Written By Sr. Kenelm Digby Knight The sixth Edition Corrected and Enlarged LONDON Printed for R. Scot T. Basset J. Wright R. Chiswel 1682. OBSERVATIONS UPON RELIGIO MEDICI To the Right Honorable Edward Earl of Dorset Baron of Buckhurst c. My Lord I Received yesternight your Lordships of the nineteenth current wherein you are pleased to oblige me not onely by extream gallant Expressions of favour and kindness but likewise by taking so far into your care the expending of my time during the tediousness of my restraint as to recommend to my reading a Book that had received the honour and safeguard of your approbation for both which I most humbly thank your Lordship And since I cannot in the way of gratefulness express unto your Lordship as I would those hearty sentiments I have of your goodness to me I will at the last endeavour in the way of Duty and Observance to let you see how the little Needle of my Soul is throughly touched at the great Loadstone of yours and followeth suddenly and strongly which way soever you becken it In this occasion the Magnetick motion was impatient to have the Book in my hands that your Lordship gave so advantagious a Character of whereupon I sent presently as late as it was to Paul's Church-yard for this Favourite of yours Religio Medici which after a while found me in a condition fit to receive a Blessing by a visit from any of such Master-pieces as you look upon with gracious eyes for I was newly gotten into my bed This good-natured creature I could easily perswade to be my Bed-fellow and to wake with me as long as I had any edge to enterain my self with the delights I sucked from so noble a conversation And truely my Lord I closed not my eyes 'till I had enricht my self with or at least exactly surveyed all the treasures that are lapped up in the folds of those few sheets To return onely a general commendation of this curious Piece or at large to admire the Author's spirit and smartness were too perfunctory an accompt and too slight an one to fo discerning and stedy an eye as yours after so particular and encharged a Summons to read heedfully this Discourse I will therefore presume to blot a Sheet or two of Paper with my reflections upon sundry passages through the whole Context of it as they shall occurrr to my remembrance Which now your Lordship knoweth this Packet is not so happy as to carry with it any one expression of my obsequiousness to you It will be but reasonable you should even here give over your further trouble of reading what my respect ingageth me to the writing of Whos 's first step is ingenuity and a well-natur'd evenness of Judgement shall be sure of applause and fair hopes in all men for the rest of his Journey And indeed my Lord me thinketh this Gentleman setteth out excellently poised with that happy temper and sheweth a great deal of Judicious Piety in making a right use of the blind zeal that Bigots lose themselves in Yet I cannot satisfie my Doubts throughly how he maketh good his professing to follow the great Wheel of the Church in matters of Divinity which surely is the solid Basis of true Religion for to do so without jarring against the Conduct of the first Mover by Eccentrical and Irregular Motions obligeth one to yield a very dutiful obedience to the determinations of it without arrogating to ones self a controling Ability in liking or misliking the Eaith Doctrine and Constitutions of that Church which one looketh upon as their North-star Whereas if I mistake not this Author approveth the Church of England not absolutely but comparatively with other Reformed Churches My next Reflection is concerning what he hath sprinkled most wittily in several places concerning the Nature and Immortality of a humane Soul and the Condition and State it is in after the dissolution of the Body And here
course of Nature and of Reason it is a mighty great blessing were it but in this regard that it giveth time leave to vent and boyl away the unquietnesses and turbulencies that follow our passions and to wean our selves gently from carnal affections and at the last to drop with ease and willingness like ripe fruit from the Tree as I remember Plotinus finely discourseth in one of his Eneads For when before the Season it is plucked off with violent hands or shaken down by rude and boysterous winds it carrieth along with it an indigested raw tast of the Wood and hath an unpleasant aigerness it its juyce that maketh it unfit for use till long time hath mellowed it And peradventure it may be so backward as in stead of ripening it may grow rotten in the very Center In like manner Souls that go out of their Bodies with affection to those Objects they leave behind them which usually is as long as they can relish them do retain still even in their Separation a by as and a languishing towards them which is the Reason why such terrene Souls appear oftenest in Coemeteries and Charnel-houses and not that moral one which our Author giveth For Life which is union with the body being that which carnal souls have straightest affection to and that they are loathest to be separated from their unquiet Spirit which can never naturally lose the impressions it had wrought in it at the time of its driving out lingereth perpetually after that dear Consort of his The impossibility cannot cure them of their impotent desires they would fain be alive again Iterumque ad tarda revierti Corpora Quae lucis miseris tam dira cupido And to this cause peradventure may be reduced the strange effect which is frequently seen in England When at the approach of the Murderer the slain body suddenly bleedeth afresh For certainly the Souls of them that are treacherously murdered by surprize use to leave their bodies with extream unwillingness and with vehement indignation against them that force them to so unprovided and abhorred a passage That Soul then to wreak its evil talent against the hated Murderer and to draw a just and desired revenge upon his head would do all it can to manifest the author of the fact To speak it cannot for in it self it wanteth Organs of voice and those it is parted from are now grown too heavy and are too benummed for it to give motion unto Yet some change it desireth to make in the body which it hath so vehement inclinations to and therefore is the aptest for it to work upon It must then endeavour to cause a motion in the subtilest and most fluid parts and consequently the most moveable ones of it This can be nothing but the Blood which then being violently moved must needs gush out at those places where it findeth issues Our Author cannot believe that the World will perish upon the ruines of its own principles But Mr. White hath demonstrated the end of it upon natural Reason And though the precise time for that general Destruction be inscrutable yet he learnedly sheweth an ingenious Rule whereby to measure in some sort the duration of it without being branded as our Author threatneth with convincible and Statute-madness or with impiety And whereas he will have the work of this last great Day the Summer up of all past days to imply annihilation and thereupon interesseth God only in it I must beg leave to contradict him namely in this Point and to affirm that the letting loose then of the activest Element to destroy this face of the World will but beget a change in it and that no annihilation can proceed from God Almighty For his Essence being as I said before self-existence it is more impossible that Not-being should flow from him than that cold should flow immediately from fire or darkness from the actual presence of light I must needs acknowledge that where he ballanceth Life and Death against one another and considereth that the latter is to be a Kind of nothing for a moment to become a pure Spirit within one instant and what followeth of this strong thought is extream handsomely said and argueth very gallant and generous Resolutions in him To exemplifie the Immortality of the Soul he needeth not have recourse to the Philosophers-stone His own store furnisheth him with a most pregnant one of reviving a Plant the same numerical Plant out of his own ashes But under his favour I believe his experiment will fail if under the notion of the same he comprehendeth all the Accidents that first accompanied that Plant for since in the ashes there remaineth onely the fixed Salt I am very confident that all the Colour and much of the Odour and Taste of it is flown away with the Volatile Salt What should I say of his making so particular a Narration of personal things and private thoughts of his own the knowledge whereof cannot much conduce to any mans betterment which I make account is the chief end of his writing this Discourse As where he speaketh of the soundness of his Body of the course of his Diet of the coolness of his Blood at the Summer-Solstice of his age of his neglect of an Epitaph how long he hath lived or may live what Popes Emperours Kings Grand-Seigniors he hath been Contemporary unto and the like Would it not be thought that he hath a special good opinion of himself and indeed he hath reason when he maketh such great Princes the Landmarks in the Chronology of himself Surely if he were to write by retale the particulars of his own Story and Life it would be a notable Romance since he telleth us in one total Sum it is a continued Miracle of thirty years Though he creepeth gently upon us at the first yet he groweth a Gyant an Atlas to use his own expression at the last But I will not censure him as he that made Notes upon Balsac's Letters and was angry with him for vexing his Readers with Stories of his Cholicks and voiding of Gravel I leave this kind of expressions without looking further into them In the next place my Lord I shall take occasion from our Author 's setting so main a difference between moral Honesty and Vertue or being vertuous to use his own phrase out of an inbred loyalty to Vertue and on the other side being vertuous for a rewards sake to discourse a little concerning Vertue in this life and the effects of it afterwards Truely my Lord however he seemeth to prefer this later I cannot but value the other much before it if we regard the nobleness and heroickness of the nature and mind from whence they both proceed And if we consider the Journeys end to which each of them carrieth us I am confident the first yieldeth nothing to the second but indeed both meet in the period of Beatitude To clear this point which is very well worth the wisest man's seriousest thought
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