knew 't Is that which Adam lost by wily train Of th' old sly snake that Eve beguil'd with speeches vain 19 This was the Image of the highest God Which brutes partake not of This Image hight True Justice that keeps ever the even trod True Piety that yields to man the sight Of heavenly beauty those fair beams so brigat Of th' everlasting Deity that shed Their sacred fire within the purer spright The fruit of â—…den wherewith souls be sed Mans awfull majesty of eyery beast ydred 20 Nor is that radiant force in humane kind Extinguisht quite he that did them create Can those dull rusty chains of sleep unbind And rear the soul unto her priftin state He can them so inlarge and elevate Aud spreaden out that they can compasse all When they no longer be incarcerate In this dark dungeon this foul fleshy wall Nor be no longer wedg'd in things corporeall 21 But rais'd aloft into their proper sphere That sphere that hight th' Orb Intellectuall They quiet sit as when the flitting fire That Natures mighty Magick down did call Into the oyly wood at its own fall Grows full of wrath and rage and gins to fume And roars and strives 'gainst its disquietall Like troubled Ghost forc'd some shape to assume But it its holding foe at doth last quite consume 22 And then like gliding spright doth straight dispear That earst was forc'd to take a fiery form Full lightly it ascends into the clear And subtile aire devoid of cloudy storm Where it doth steddy stand all-uniform Pure pervious immixt innocuous mild Nought scorching nought glowing nought enorm Nought destroying not destroy'd not defil'd Foul fume being spent just 'fore its flight it fairly smil'd 23 Thus have I trac'd the soul in all its works And severall conditions have displaid And show'd all places where so e'r she lurks Even her own lurkings of her self bewray'd In plants in beasts in men while here she staid And freed from earth how then she spreads on high Her heavenly rayes that also hath been said Look now my Muse and cast thy piercing eye On every kind and tell wherein all souls agree 24 Here dare I not define't th' Entelechy Of organized bodies For this life This centrall life which men take souls to be Is not among the beings relative And sure some souls at least are self-active Withouten body having Energie Many put out their force informative In their ethereall corporeity Devoid of heterogeneall organity 25 Self-moving substance that be th' definition Of souls that longs to them in generall This well expresseth that common condition Of every vitall centre creaturall For why both that hight form spermaticall Hath here a share as also that we term Soul sensitive I 'll call 't form bestiall It makes a beast added to plantall sperin Adde rationall form it makes a man as men affirm 26 All these be substances self-moveable And that we call virtue magneticall That what 's defin'd be irreproveable I comprehend it in the life plantall Mongst trees there 's found life Sympatheticall Though trees have not animadversive sense Therefore the soul 's Autocinelicall Alone What ere 's in this defining sense Is soul what ere 's not soul is driven far from heace 27 But that each soul 's Autocineticall Is easly shown by sitting all degrees Of souls The first are forms Spermaticall That best be seen in shaping armed trees Which if they want their fixt Centreities By which they fairly every part extend And gently inact with spred vitalities The flowring boughs How Natures work doth wend Who knows or from what inward stay it doth depend 28 Forthy let first an inward centre hid Be put That 's nought but Natures fancie ti'd In closer knot shut up into the mid Of its own self so our own spirits gride With piercing wind in storming winter tide Contract themselves and shrivell up together Like snake the countrey man in snow espi'd Whose spright was quite shrunk in by nipping weather From whence things come by foman forc'd they backward thither 29 The rigid cold had forc'd into its centre This serpents life but when the rurall Swain Plac'd her upon warm hearth and heat did enter Into her â—…ummed corps she gan to strain And stretch herself and her host entertain With scornfull hisse shooting her anchor'd tongue Threatning her venom'd teeth so straight again She prov'd a living snake when she along Her corse free life had drove from centre steddie strong 30 So doth the gentle warmth of solar heat Eas'ly awake the centre seminall That makes it softly streak on its own seat And fairly forward force its life internall That inward life 's th' impresse imaginall Of Natures Art which sweetly flowreth out From that is cleep'd the sphere spermaticall For there is plac'd the never fading root Of every flower or herb that into th' aire doth shoot 31 Fairly invited by Sols piercing ray And inward tickled with his chearing spright All plants break thorough into open day Rend the thick curtain of cold cloying night The earths opakenes enemie to light And crown themselves in signe of victorie With shining leaves and goodly blossomes bright Thus called out by friendly sympathie Their souls move of themselves on their Centreitie 32 But it's more plain in animalitie When fierie coursers strike the grassie ground With swift tempestuous feet that farre and nigh They fill mens eares with a broad thundring sound From hollow hoof so strongly it doth rebound What 's that that twitcheth up their legs so fast And fiercely jerks them forth that many wound They give to their own mother in their hast With eager steps they quickly mete the forrest wast 34 That outward form is but a neurospast The soul it is that on her subtile ray That she shoots out the limbs of moving beast Doth stretch straight forth so straightly as she may Bones joynts and sinews shap'd of stubborn clay Cannot so eas'ly lie in one straight line With her projected might much lesse obey Direct retractions of these beames fine So straight retreat they must of necessitie decline 35 But yet they follow in a course oblique With angular doublings as the joints permit So go they up together not unlike An iron candle-stick the smith hath fit With many junctures whom in studious sit Some scholar set a work but to return Lest what we aim'd at we unwares omit If souls of beasts their bodies move and turn And wield at phansies beck as we describ'd beforn 36 Then be the souls of beasts self-moving forms Bearing their bodies as themselves think meet Invited or provok'd so they transform At first themselves within then straight in sight Those motions come which suddenly do light Upon the bodies visible which move According to the will of th' inward spright In th' inward spright be anger hate and love Hence claws horns hoofs they use the pinching ill t' amove 37 Thus have I plainly prov'd that souls of beasts And plants do move
conceit and hold as reason doth reveal 24 Again if souls corporeall you ween Do the light images of things appear Upon the surface slick bright smooth and sheen As in a lookingglasse Or whether dare They passe the outside and venture so farre As into the depth of the souls substance If this then they together blended are That nought we see with right discriminance If that the object gone away those forms do glance 25 Thus should we be devoid of memory And be all darknesse till the good presence Of outward objects put in energie Our sleeping soul. But this experience Plainly confutes For even in their absence We do retain their true similitude So lovers wont to maken dalliance With the fair shade their minds do still include And wistly view the grace wherewith she is endude 26 But now new reasons I will set on foot Drawn from the common sense that 's not extense But like a centre that around doth shoot Its rayes those rayes should be the outward sense As some resemble them But by no pretence Would I the outward senses should be thought To act so in a spread circumference That the seat of their forms should be distrought Or that by reach of quantities dead arms they wrought 27 For see how little share hath quantitie In act of seeing when we comprehend The heavens vast compasse in our straitend eye Nor may the ox with the Eagle contend Because a larger circle doth extend His slower lights So that if outward sense In its low acts doth not at all depend On quantity how shall the common-sense That 's farre more spiritall have thence lâ—…s dependence 28 But still more presly this point to pursue By th' smelling odours voyces by the eare By th' eye we apprehend the coloured hew Of bodies visible But what shall steer The erring senses where shall they compear In controversie what the difference Of all their objects can with judgement clear Distinguish and discern One common-sense For one alone must have this great preeminence 29 And all this one must know though still but one Else't could not judge of all But make it two Then tell me doth the soul by this alone Apprend this object that the sense doth show And that by that or doth it by both know Both objects suppose this colour and that sound If both knew both then nature did bestow In vain one faculty it doth redound But if this that that this what shall them both compound 30 And by comparison judge of them both Therefore that judge is one But whether one Without division leâ—…s now try that troth If it be any wise extent you 're gone By the same reason that afore was shown Suppose't a line the least of quantity Or sound is here there colour or each one Of the lines parts receive them both If we Grant that again we find a superfluity 31 If this part this and that part that receive We are at the same losse we were afore For one to judge them both or we bereave Our souls of judgement For who can judge more Than what he knowes It is above his power Therefore it 's plain the common sense is one One individed faculty But store Of parts would breed infinite confusion When every part mought claim proper sensation 32 If not nor all could exercise the Act Of any sense For could a power of sense Arise from stupid parts that plainly lack'd That might themselves Thus with great confidence We may conclude that th' humane souls essence Is indivisible yet every where In this her body Cause th' intelligence She hath of whatsoever happens here The aking foot the eye doth view the hand doth cheere 34 What tells the hand or head the toes great grief When it alone is pinch'd with galling shooes Do other parts not hurt call for relief For theirown fellow Ill messenger of woes That grieveth not himself Can they disclose That misery without impression Upon themselves Therefore one spirit goes Through all this bulk not by extension But by a totall self-reduplication 35 Which neither body nor dispersed form Nor point of form dispersed e'r could do And bodies life or spright for to transform Into our soul though that might this undo But yet so rash conceit to yield unto Cannot be safe for if it propagate It 's self and 'ts passions yet they free may go Unmark'd if sense would not them contemplate So doth the mundane spright not heeded circulate 35 Besides if from that spirit naturall The nurse of plants you should dare to assert That lively inward Animadversall To springen out it would surely invert The order of the orbs from whence do stert All severall beings and of them depend Therefore the orb Phantastick must exert All life phantasticall sensitive send The life of sense so of the rest unto each end 36 There 's nought from its own self can senden forth Ought better then it self So nought gives sense That hath not sense it self nor greater worth Then sense nor sense nor better springs from thence Nor that which higher is can have essence Lesse active lesse reduplicate lesse free Lesse spiritall then that 's amov'd from hence And is an orb of a more low degree Wherefore that centrall life hath more activitie 37 And present is in each part totally Of this her body Nor we ought diffide Although some creatures have vitalitie And stirre and move when we have them divide And cut in twain Thus worms in sturdie pride Do wrigge and wrest their parts divorc'd by knife But we must know that Natures womb doth hide Innumerable treasures of all life And how to breaken out upon each hint they strive 38 So when the present actuall centrall life Of sense and motion is gone with one part To manage it straight for the due relief Of th' other particle there up doth start Another centrall life and tries its art But it cannot raigne long nor yet recure That deadly wound The plantall lifes depare And flitten or shrunk spright that did procure Her company being lost make her she 'll not endure 39 And so at last is gone from whence she came For soon did fade that sweet allurement The plantall life which for a while dâ—…d flame With sympathetick fire but that being spent Straight she is flowne Or may you this content That some impression of that very soul That 's gone if gone with plantall spirit meint The broken corse thus busily may roll Long 't is till water boild doth stranger heat controul 40 Thus have we prov'd ' cording to our insight That humane souls be not corporcall With reasons drawn from the sensitive might Nor bodies nor spread forms materiall Whether you substances list them to call Or qualities or point of these I 'll bring Hereafter proofs from power rational In humane souls to prove the self same-thing Mount up aloft my Muse and now more shrilly sing THE ARGUMENT OF PSYCHATHANASIA Book 2 Cant. 3. The souls
soul to sit at liberty Not wedg'd into this masse of earth but free Unloos'd from any strong necessity To do the bodies dictates while we see Clear reason shining in serenity Calling above unto us pointing to What 's right and decent what doth best agree With those sweet lovely Ideas that do show Some glimps of their pure light So Sol through clouds doth flow 41 How oft do we neglect this bodies life And outward comely plight for to adorn Our soul with virtuous ornaments and strive To fat our mind with truth while it 's forlorn Squallid half-nasty pallid wan deform Can this desire from the base body spring No sure such brave atchievements be yborn Within the soul tend to her perfecting See th' independent mind in her self circuling 42 Best plight of body hinders such like acts How doth she then upon the body pend To do those subtle high pure heavenly facts What doth the Sun his rayes that he out-sends Smother or choke though clouds that upward wend May raised be by him yet of those clouds That he doth congregate he no'te depend Nor doth the soul that in this flesh doth croud Her self rely on that thick vapour where she 's shroud 43 But still to prove it clearer If the mind Without the bodyes help can operate Of its own self then nothing can we find To scruple at but that souls separate Safely exist not subject unto fate Nothing depending on their carcases That they should fade when those be ruinate But first perpend well both their energies That we may better see their independencies 44 The living body where the soul doth ' bide These functions hath phansie sense memory How into sense these outward forms do glide I have already told Vitality And presentisick circularity Is spread through all there is one Mundane spright And body vitall corporality We have from hence Our souls be counite With the worlds spright and body with these herself she has dight 45 Our body struck by evolution Of outward forms spread in the worlds vast spright Our listning mind by its adversion Doth notice take but nothing is empight In it Of old Gods hand did all forms write In humane souls which waken at the knock Of Mundane shapes If they were naked quite Of innate forms though heaven and earth should rock With roring winds they 'd heare no more then sensles stock 46 Phansy's th' impression of those forms that flit In this low life They oft continue long When as our spright more potently is hit By their incursions and appulses strong Like heated water though a while but hung On fiercer fire an hot impression Long time retains so forms more stoutly flung Against our spright make deep insculption Long time it is till their clear abolition 47 Hence springeth that which men call memory When outward object doth characterize Our inward common spright of when that we From our own soul stir up clear phantasies Which be our own elicited Idees Springing from our own contrall life by might Of our strong Fiat as oft as we please With these we seal that under grosser spright Make that our note-book there our choisest notions write 48 But sith it is not any part of us But longeth unto the great world it must Be chang'd for course of time voraginous With rapid force is violently just Makes each thing pay with what it was intrust The common life sucks back the common spright The body backward falls into the dust It doth it by degrees Hence phancie sight And memorie in age do not their functions right 49 Often disease or some hard casualtie Doth hurt this spirit that a man doth lose The use of sense wit phansie memorie That hence rash men our souls mortall suppose Through their rude ignorance but to disclose The very truth our soul 's in safetie In that distemper that doth ill dispose Her under spright But her sad miserie Is that so close she 's tied in a prone Unitie 50 Leans on this bodies false vitalitie Seeks for things there not in herself nor higher Extremely loves this bodies company Trusts in its life thither bends her desire But when it gins to fail she 's left i' th' mire Yet hard upon us hangs th' Eternall light The ever-live Idees the lamping fire Of lasting Intellect whose nearnesse might Illumine were our minds not lost in that frail spright 51 That spright and we are plain another thing Which now I 'll clearly show that we may see Our independence on its existing Which I must prove by eithers energie That spright hath no preceptibilitie Of her impressions Phantasie nor sense Perceive themselves often with open eye We look upon a man in our presence And yet of that near object have no cognoscence 52 And so of Phansies that be fresh enough Even deeply seald upon that lower spright Unlesse we seek them out and pierce them through With aiming animadversion they in night Do lurk unknown to us though they be bright In their own selves Again some object may In its great vigour lustre sweying might This spirit wound by its fierce riving ray Our sight is hurt by th' eye of the broad blasing day 53 Beside the senses each one are restraind To its own object so â—…s Phantasie That in the spirits compasse is containd As likewise the low naturall memorie But sooth to say by a strong sympathie We both are mov'd by these and these do move As the light spider that makes at a flie Her self now moves the web she subt'ly wove Mov'd first by her own web when here the flie did rove 54 Like spider in her web so do we sit Within this spirit and if ought do shake This subtil loom we feel as it doth hit Most part into adversion we awake Unlesse we chance into our selves betake Our selves or listen to the lucid voice Of th'intellect which these low tumults slake But our own selves judge of what ere accloyes Our muddied mind or what lifts up to heavenly joyes 55 All the five senses Phansie Memorie We feel their work distinguish and compare Find out their natures by the subtiltie Of sifting reason Then they objects are Of th' understanding bear no greater share In this same act then objects wont to do They are two realties distinguish'd clear One from the other as I erst did show She knows that spright that sprigh our soul can never know 56 Sense Phansie Memorie as afore was said Be hurt by stronger objects or be spoild By longer exercise Our soul ne're fades But doth its spright commiserate long toild With agitation when it feels it moild Descends to comfort it and gives it rest But she grows quicker vaster never foild With contemplations that this spright molest The inward soul 's renew'd as cannot be exprest 57 How soul and spright be severed we see But how 't works by it self is not yet shown I mean without this sprights assistencie Though not quite by its self High light doth crown Its
Souls the same to beasts we no'te denie 5 But I herein no longer list contend The two first kinds of souls I 'll quite omit And ' cording as at first I did intend Bestirre me stifly force my feeble wit To rescue humane souls from deaths deep pit Which I shall do with reasons as subtile As I can find slight proofs cannot well fit In so great cause nor phansies florid wile I 'll win no mans assent by a false specious guile 6 I onely wish that arguments exile May not seem nought unto the duller eye Nor that the fatter phansie my lean style Do blame it 's fittest for philosophie And give me leave from any energie That springs from humane soul my cause to prove And in that order as they list to flie Of their own selves so let them freely rove That naturally doth come doth oft the stronger move 7 Self-motion and centrall stabilitie I have already urg'd in generall Al 's did right presly to our soul applie Those properties who list it to recall Unto their minds but now we 'll let it fall As needlesse Onely that vitalitie That doth extend this great Universall And move th' inert Materialitie Of great and little worlds that keep in memorie 8 And how the mixture of their rayes may breed Th' opinion of uncertain qualitie When they from certain roots of life do spreed But their pure beams must needs ychanged be When that those rayes or not be setten free Thinly dispers'd or else be closely meint With other beams of plain diversitie That causeth oft a strong impediment So doth this bodies life to the souls high intent 9 The lower man is nought but a fair plant Whose grosser matter is from the base ground The Plastick might thus finely did him paint And fill'd him with the life that doth aâ—…ound In all the places of the world around This spirit of life is in each shapen'd thing Suck'd in and changed and strangely confound As we conceive This is the nourishing Of all but spermall form the certain shapening 10 This is that strange-form'd statue magicall That hovering souls unto it can allure When it 's right fitted down those spirits fall Like Eagle to her prey and so endure While that low life be in good temperature That a dead bodie without vitall spright And friendly temper should a guest procure Of so great worth without the dear delight Of joyous sympathie no man can reckon right 11 But here unlucky Souls do waxen sick Of an ill surfeit from the poison'd bait Of this sweet tree yet here perforce they stick In weak condition in a languid state Many through ignorance do fondly hate To be releas'd from this imprisonmenâ—… And grieve the walls be so nigh ruinate They be bewitch'd so with the blandishment Of that fresh strumpet when in love they first were ment 12 Others disdain this so near unitie So farre they be from thinking they be born Of such low parentage so base degree And fleshes foul attraction they do scorn They be th' outgoings of the Eastern morn Alli'd to God and his vitalitie And pray to their first spring that thus forlorn And left in mud that he would set them free And them again possesse of pristine puritie 13 But seemeth not my Muse too hastily To soare aloft that better by degrees Unto the vulgar mans capacitie Mought show the souls so high excellencies And softly from all corporeities It heaven up unto its proper seat When we have drove away grosse falsities That do assault the weaker mens conceit And free the simple mind from phansies foul deceit 14 The drooping soul so strongly's coloured With the long commerce of corporealls That she from her own self awide is led Knows not herself but by false name she calls Her own high being and what ere befalls Her grosser bodie she that miserie Doth deem her own for she herself miscalls Or some thin bodie or spread qualitie Or point of qualitie or fixt or setten free 29 But whether thin spread body she doth deem Her self dispersed through this grosser frame Or doth herself a qualitie esteem Or queint complexion streaming through the same Or else some lucid point herself doth name Of such a qualitie in chiefest part Strongly fix'd down or whether she doth clame More freedome for that point in head nor heart Fast seated yet saith she the bodies brat thou art 16 Thence thou arose thence thou canst not depart There die thou must when thy dear nurse decayes But these false phansies I with reason smart Shall eas'ly chace away and the mind raise To higher pitch O listen to my layes And when you have seen fasâ—… seald eternitie Of humane souls then your great Maker praise For his never fading benignitie And feed your selves with thought of immortalitie THE ARGUMENT OF PSYCHATHANASIA Book 2 Cant. 2. Sense no good judge of truth What 's spright What body we descrie Prove from the souls inferiour might Her incorp'reitie 1 WHile I do purpose with my self to sing The souls incorporeitie I fear That it a worse perplexitie may bring Unto the weaker mind and duller eare For she may deem herself ' stroyd quite and clear While all corporealls from her we expell For she has yet not mark'd that higher sphere Where her own essence doth in safetie dwell But views her lower shade like boy at brink of well 2 Dotes upon sense and its base energie Busied about vain forms corporeall Contemnes as nought unseen exilities Objects of virtue Intellectuall Though these of Substances be principall But I to better hope would fainly lead The sunken mind and cunningly recall Again to life that long hath liggen dead Awake ye drooping souls shake off that drousi head 3 Why do you thus confide in sleepy sense Ill judge of her own objects who 'll believe The eye contracting Phoebus Orb immense Into the compasse of a common sieve If solid reason did not us relieve The host of heaven alwayes would idle stand In our conceit nor could the Sun revive The nether world nor do his Lords command Things near seem further off farst off the nearst at hand 4 The touch acknowledgeth no gustables The tast no fragrant smell or stinking sent The smell doth not once dream of audibles The hearing never knew the verdant peint Of springs gay mantle nor light from heaven sent That doth discover all that goodly pride So that the senses would with zeal fervent Condemne each other and their voyce deride If mutually they heard such things they never try'd 5 But reason that above the sense doth sit Doth comprehend all their impressions And tells the touch it s no fanatick sit That makes the sight of illustrations So stifly talk upon occasions But judgeth all their voyces to be true Concerning their straight operations And doth by nimble consequences shew To her own self what those wise five yet never knew 6 They never knew ought but corporealls But see how reason doth their verdict
incorporeitie From powers rationall We prove Discern true pietie From bitternesse and gall 1 LIke Carpenter entred into a wood To cut down timber for some edifice Of stately structure whiles he casts abroad His curious eye he much perplexed â—…s There stand in view so many goodly trees Where to make choice to enter his rugg'd saw My Muse is plung'd in like perplexities So many arguments themselves do show That where to pitch my wavering raind doth yet scarce know 2 One taller then the rest my circling eye Hath hit upon which if 't be sound at heart Will prove a goodly piece to raise on high The heavenly structure of that deemed part Of man his soul and by unerring art Set his foundation 'bove the bodies frame On its own wheels that it may thence depart Intire unhurt So doth the Scythian swain Drive his light moving house on the waste verdant plain 3 I 'll sing of pietie that now I mean That Trismegist thus wisely doth define Knowledge of God That 's pietie I ween The highest of virtues a bright beam divine Which to the purer soul doth sweetly shine But what 's this beam and how doth it enlight What doth it teach It teacheth to decline Self-love and frampard wayes the hypocrite Doth trample in accloy'd with dirt and dismall night 4 Not rage nor mischief nor love of a sect Nor eating irefulnesse harsh crueltie Contracting Gods good will nor conscience checkt Or chok'd continually with impietie Fauster'd and fed with hid hypocrisie Nor tyranny against perplexed minds Nor forc'd conceit nor man-idolatrie All which the eye of searching reason blinds And the souls heavenly flame in dungeon darknesse binds 5 Can warres and jarres and fierce contention Swoln hatred and consuming envy spring From pietie No. 'T is opinion That makes the riven heavens with trumpets ring And thundring engine murd'rous balls out-sling And send mens groning ghosts to lower shade Of horrid hell This the wide world doth bring To devastation makes mankind to fade Such direfull things doth false religion perswade 6 But true religion sprong from God above Is like its fountain full of charity Embracing all things with a tender love Full of good will and meek expectancy Full of true justice and sure verity In heart and voice free large even in finite Not wedg'd in straight particularity But grasping all in its vast active spright Bright lamp of God! that men would joy in thy pure light 7 Can souls that be thus universalis'd Begot into the life of God e're die His light is like the sunne that doth arise Upon the just and unjust can they sly Into a nothing and hath God an eye To see himself thus wasted and decay In his true members can mortality Seize upon that that doth it self display Above the laws of matter or the bodies sway 8 For both the bodie and the bodies spright Doth things unto particulars confine Teaching them partiall friendship and fell spight But those pure souls full of the life divine Look upon all things with mild friendly cyne Ready to do them good Thus is their will Sweetly spread out and ever doth incline The bent of the first Goodnesse to fulfill Ay me that dreary death such lovely life should spill 9 Besides this largenesse in the will of man And winged freenesse now let 's think upon His understanding and how it doth scan Gods being unto whom religion Is consecrate Imagination That takes its rise from sense so high ascent Can never reach yet intellection Or higher gets or at least hath some sent Of God vaticinates or is parturiâ—…nt 10 For ask it whether God be this or that A body infinite or some mighty spright Yet not almighty it condemnes such chat Whether all present or in some place pight Whether part here part there or every whit In every point it likes that latter well So that its plain that some kind of insight Of Gods own being in the soul doth dwell Though what God is we cannot yet so plainly tell 11 As when a name lodg'd in the memory But yet through time almost obliterate Confusely hovers near the phantasie The man that 's thus affected bids relate A catologue of names It is not that Saith he nor that that 's something like to it That nothing like that 's lik'st of all I wot This last you nam'd it 's not like that a whit O that 's the very name now we have rightly hit 12 Thus if 't be lawfull least things to compare With greatest so our selves affected be Concerning Gods high essence for we are Not ignorant quite of this mystery Nor clearly apprehend the Deity But in mid state I call 't parturient And should bring forth that live Divinity Within our selves if once God would consent To shew his specious form and nature eminent 13 For here it lies like colours in the night Unseen and unregarded but the sunne Displayes the beauty and the gladsome plight Of the adorned earth while he doth runne His upper stage But this high prize is wonne By curbing sense and the self-seeking life True Christian mortification Thus God will his own self in us revive If we to mortifie our straightned selves do strive 14 But can ought bodily Gods form receive Or have it in its self potentially Or can ought sprung of this base body heve It self so high as to the Deitie To clamber strive to reach infinitie Can ought born of this carcase be so free As to grasp all things in large sympathie Can lives corporeall quite loosened be From their own selves casheering their centreitie 15 These all ill suit with corporeitie But do we not amisse with stroke so strong All to dispatch at once needed we flie So high at first we might have chose among The many arguments that close do throng And tender their own selves this cause to prove Some of a meaner rank and then along Fairly and softly by degrees to move My Muse kens no such pomp she must with freedome rove 16 And now as chance her guides compendiously The heads of many proofs she will repeat Which she lists not pursue so curiously But leaves the reader his own brains â—…o beat To find their fuller strength As the souls meat Of which she feeds if that she feed at all She is immortall if she need not eat But if her food prove to be spiritall Then can we deem herself to be corporeall 17 The souls most proper food is veritie Got and digest by Contemplation Hence strength enlargement and activitie She finds as doth this bulk by infusion Of grosser meats and drinks concoction Well perfected the body is strong by these The soul by reasons right perswasion But that truth's spiritall we may with ease Find out For truth the soul from bodies doth release 18 Next argument let be abstraction When as the soul with notion precise Keeps off the corporall condition And a nak'd simple essence doth devise Against the law of Corporeities It doth
fears do send 'T is true I cannot write without a quill Nor ride without an horse If chance that rend Or use make blunt o're-labouring this kill Then can I walk not ride not write but think my sill 6 Our body is but the souls instrument And when it fails onely these actions cease That thence depend But if new eyes were sent Unto the aged man with as much ease And accuratenesse as when his youth did please The wanton lasse he now could all things see Old age is but this fading bulks disease The soul from death and sicknesse standeth free My hackney fails not I my pen not sciencie 7 But as I said of things we do desire So vehemently we never can be sure Enough Therefore my Muse thou must aspire To higher pitch and fearfull hearts secure Not with slight phansie but with reason pure Evincing the souls independency Upon this body that doth her imn ure That when from this dark prison she shall fly All men may judge her rest in immortality 8 Therefore I 'll sing the tricentreity Of humane souls and how they wake from sleep In which ywrapt of old they long do ly Contract with cold and drench'd in Lethe deep Hugging their plantall point It makes me weep Now I so clearly view the solemn Spring Of silent Night whose Magick dew doth steep These drousie souls of men whose dropping wing Keeps off the light of life and blunts each siery sting 9 Three centres hath the soul One plantall hight Our parents this revive in nuptiall bed This is the principle that hales oâ—… Night Subjects the mind unto dull drow siehead If we this follow thus we shall be led To that dark straitnesse that did bind before Our sluggish life when that is sâ—… rivelled Into its sunken centre we no more Are conscious of life what can us then restore 10 Unlesse with fiery whips fell Nemesis Do lash our sprights and cruelly do gore Our groning ghosts this is the way I wisse The onely way to keep 's from Morpheus power Both these so dismall are that I do showr Uncessant tears from my compassionate eyes Alas ye souls why should or sâ—…eep devour Sweet functions of life or hellist cries To tender heart resound your just calamities 11 Thus may you all from your dead drow sinesse Be wak'd by inward sting and pinching wo That you could wish that that same heavinesse Might ever you o'represse and Lethe flow Upon your drowned life But you shall glow With urging fire that doth resuscitate Your middle point and makes it self to gnaw It self with madnesse while't doth ruminatc On its deformity and sterill vexing state 12 Continuall desire that nought effects Perfect hot glowing fervour out to spring In some good world With fury it affects To reach the Land of life then struck with sting Of wounding memory despairs the thing And further off it sees it self the more It rageth to obtain thus doth she bring More fewell to her flame that scorched sore With searching fire she 's forc'd to yell and loudly rore 13 Thus she devours her self not satisfies Her self nought hath she but what 's dearly spun From her own bowells jejune exilties Her body 's gone therefore the rising sun She sees no more nor what in day is done The sporting aire no longer cools her bloud Pleasures of youth and manhood quite are gone Nor songs her eare nor mouth delicious food Doth fill But I 'll have this more fully understood 14 Three centres hath mans soul in Unity Together joynd or if you will but one Those three are one with a Triplicity Of power or rayes Th' high'st intellection Which being wak'd the soul's in Union With God If perfectly regenerate Into that better world corruption Hath then no force her blisse to perturbate The low'st do make us subject to disturbing fate 15 But low'st gins first to work the soul doth frame This bodies fabrick imploy'd in one long thought So wholy taken up that she the same Observeth not till she quite hath wrought So men asleep some work â—…o end have brought Not knowing of it yet have found it done Or we may say the matter that she taught And suck'd unto her self to work upon Is of one warmth with her own spright and feels as one 16 And thus the body being the souls work From her own centre so entirely â—…ade Seated i' th' heart for there this spright doth lurk It is no wonder 't is so easly sway'd Aâ—… its command But when this work shall fade The soul dismisseth it as an old thought 'T is but one form but many be display'd Amid her higher rayes dismist and brought Back as she list and many come that ne're were sought 17 The soul by making this strange edifice Makes way unto it self to exercise Functions of life and still more waked is The more she has perfected her fine devise Hath wrought her self into sure sympathies With this great world Her ears like hollow caves Resound to her own spright the energies Of the worlds spright If it ought suffered have Then presentifick circles to her straight notice gave 18 We know this world because our soul hath made Our body of this sensible worlds spright And body Therefore in the glassie shade Of our own eyes they having the same might That glasse or water hath we have the sight Of what the Mundane spirit suffereth By colours figures or inherent light Sun stars and all on earth it hurâ—…eth To each point of it self so far as 't circuleth 19 And where it lighteth on advantages Its circulings grow sensible So hills That hollow be do audible voices Resound The soul doth imitate that skill In framing of the eare that sounds may swell In that concavitie The crystall springs Reflect the light of heaven if they be still And clear the soul doth imitate and bring The eye to such a temper in her shapening 20 So eyes and eares be not mere perforations But a due temper of the Mundane spright And ours together else the circulations Of sounds would be well known by outward sight And th' eare would colours know figures and light So that it 's plain that when this bodie 's gone This world to us is clos'd in darknesse quite And all to us is in dead silence drown Thus in one point of time is this worlds glory flowne 21 But if 't be so how doth Psyche heare or see That hath nor eyes nor eares She sees more clear Then we that see but secundarily We see at distance by a circular Diffusion of that spright of this great sphere Of th' Universe Her sight is tactuall The sunne and all the starres that do appear She feels them in herself can distance all For she is at each one purely presentiall 22 To us what doth diffusion circular And our pure shadowed eyes bright crystalline But vigorously our spright particular Affect while things in it so clearly shine That 's done continually in the heavens sheen The
own life outray'd His outgone Centre 's on that centre staid What disadvantage then can the decay Of this poore carcase do when it doth fade The soul no more depends on this frail clay Then on our eye depends bright Phoebus glist'ring ray 23 But in this argument we 'll no longer stay Consider now the souls conversion Into it self Nought divisible may Close with it self by revolution For then or part in this reflexion Is drove into a part or part to th' whole Or whole to part or near compression The whole into the whole doth closely roll But easly all these wayes right reason will controll 24 If part turn into part part into whole Whole into part the thing doth not convert Into it self the thing it self is all Not part of 't self if all to all revert Each part then into each part is insert But tell me then how is their quantity If every part with each part is refert Thus swallowed up they 'll have no distancy So you destroy suppos'd divirsibilitie 25 Wherefore that thing is individuous What ever can into it self reflect Such is the soul as hath been prov'd by us Before and further now we do detect By its foure wheels The first hight Intellect Wherewith she drives into her Nature deep And finds it out next Will this doth affect Her self found out Her self then out doth peep Into these acts she into both doth easly creep 26 But this conversion's from the body free Begins not thence nor thither doth return Nor is the soul worse then its energie If in its acts it be far higher born Then they should pend on this base bulk forlorn Then also she hath no dependency Upon this body but may safely scorn That low condition of servility And blame all that averre that false necessity 27 If she should issue from this nether spring Nearer she kept to her originall She were the stronger and her works would bring To more perfection but alas they fall They fail by near approch The best of all Wax weak and faint by too close union With this foul fount Might intellectuall Grows misty by this strait conjunction The will is woxen weak its vigour quite is gone 28 But O! how oft when she her self doth cut From nearer commerce with the low delight Of things corporeall and her eyes doth shut To those false fading lights she feels her spright Fill'd with excessive pleasure such a plight She finds that it doth fully satisfie Her thirsty life Then reason shines out bright And holy love with mild serenity Doth hug her harmlesse self in this her purity 29 What grave monitions and sure prophesie Have men in sicknesse left a true testation Of the souls utter independency On this poore crasie corse May that narration Of Aristotles move easie perswasion Of his Eudemus to whom sicâ—… at Phere While sleep his senses bound this revelation A gentle youth did bring with goodly cheer And jolly blith deportment chacing needlesse fear 30 Told him that sicknesse would not mortall prove He should grow well e'r long but deaths drad power On that towns tyrant should be shortly drove Swift vengeance on his cursed head should showr Both proved true I could in plenty poure Such like examples as of Pherecyde Calanus him of Rhodes and others more But it is needlesse 't is a truth well tried The higher works the soul the more it is untied 31 Then quite set loose from this bulks heavy chain She is in happiest plight so far she is From being nought or perishing Again We find such utter contrarieties Betwixt the bodies and her energies That we can no wayes think she pends at all Of that with which she has such repugnancies What thing doth fight with its Originall The spring and stream be alwayes homogeneall 32 But the high heaven-born soul sprung out from Jove Ever is clashing with the foolery Of this dull body which the sense doth love And erring phansie It were long to trie In every thing O how 't would magnifie The height of pleasures that fall under sense This well describ'd would-prove its Deity A vast round body cloth'd with th' excellence Of glorious glistring light through the wide aire extense 33 Bravely adorn'd with diverse colours gay Even infinite varieties that shine With wond'rous brightnesse varnish'd with the ray Of that clear light with motion circuline Let turn about and stir up sounds divine That sweetly may affect th' attentive eare Adde fragrant odours wast with gentle wind Adde pleasant taste soft touch to Venus dear This is the bodies God this is its highest sphere 34 But from far higher place and brighter light Our reason checks us for this vanity Calls to us warns us that that empty sight Lead not our soul unto Idolatry Make us not rest in easie falsitie If thou be stirred up by working sire To search out God to find the Deity Take to thy self not what thine eyes admire Or any outward sense or what sense can desire 35 Behold a light far brighter then the Sunne The Sun 's a shadow if you them compare Or grosse Cimmerian mist the fairest Noon Exceeds not the meridian night so far As that light doth the Sun So perfect clear So perfect pure it is that outward eye Cannot behold this inward subtile starre But indisperst is this bright Majesty Yet every where out shining in in finitie 36 Unplac'd unparted one close Unity Yet omnipresent all things yet but one Not streak'd with gaudy multiplicity Pure light without discolouration Stable without circumvolution Eternall rest joy without passing sound What sound is made without collision Smell taste and touch make God a grosse compound Yet truth of all that 's good is perfectly here found 37 This is a riddle unto outward sense And heavie phansie that can rise no higher Then outward senses knows no excellence But what those five do faithfully inspire From their great god this world nor do desire More then they know wherefore to consopite Or quench this false light of bold phansies fire Surely must be an act contrary quite Unto this bodies life and its low groveling spright 38 Wherefore the body 's not originall Of humane soul when it doth thus resist That principle which still more clearly shall Be proved Oft when either drowsie mists Provoke to sleep or worst of senses lists To ease its swelling veins or stomach craves Its wonted food that it too long hath mist Or our dry lungs cool liquor fain would have Or when in warre our heart suggests the fear of grave 39 Yet high desire of truth and deep insight Into Gods mystery makes us command These low attractions and our countries right Bids march on bravely stout and stifly stand In bloudy fight and try 't by strength of hand Thus truth and honesty so sway our will That we no longer doubt to break the band Of lower Nature and this body kill Or vex so we the Laws of reason may fulfill 40 This proves the
summitie when sleep that spright doth drown Wrapt into highest heavens in ecstasie It sees such things as would low life confound Enrage with a tumultuous agonie Burst this pent spright for want of fit capacitie 58 Then it is joynd with the Eternall Idees Which move our souls as sights do here below Joynd with the spright of God we gaze on these As by the Mundane spright th' out-world we know Our soul hangs twixt them both and there doth go Where either spright doth snatch her Either raise Her inward forms which leap out nothing-slow When sympathie them calls Thus she displayes Her inward life Gods light views with her wakened rayes 59 When we confute a pregnant falsitie Cloth'd with strong phantasms in our snared mind As this suppose The earths stabilitie What help can we in our low phansie find Possest of this impression what shall bind This stubborn falshood so inveterate That spright so stifly set can't be inclin'd By ought but by the soul that contemplates Truth by her self brings out her forms that be innate 60 Flies she to sense sense pleads for Ptolemee Flies she to her low phansie that 's so swayd By sense and fore-imprest Astronomie By botch'd inculcate paradigmes made By senses dictate that they 'll both perswade That Philolaus and wise Heraclide Be frantick both Copernicus twice mad She cannot then this question well decide By ought but her own forms that in her self reside 61 Which she calls out unto her faithfull aid Commands deep silence to fond phantasie Whose odious prating truth I ath oft betraid And in its stead brought in rash falsitie Seated in sowr inert stupiditie Then farewell sense and what from sense hath sprong Saith she I 'll contemplate in puritie And quit my self of that tumultuous throng What then she finds shall be unfold in my next song THE ARGUMENT OF PSYCHATHANASIA Book 3. Cant. 3. That th' earth doth move proofs Physicall Unto us do descrie Adde reasons Theosophicall Al 's ' adde Astronomie 1 BLest souls first Authours of Astronomie Who clomb the heavens with your high reaching mind Sâ—…al'd the high battlements of the lofty skie To whom compar'd this earth a point you find Your bodies lesse what measure hath defin'd What art that mighty vastnesse Such high facts The ancient Giants swoln with raging wind Could not effect A subtile Parallax A dark Eclipse do quite obscure their braving acts 2 O the great might of mans high Phantasie That with a shade or a divided line That nought this but a thin exilitie Can do farre more then strength enrag'd with tine Hoysted with haughty pride That brood combine To clamber up to heaven Hill upon hill Ossa upon Olympus doth recline Their brawnie arms redoubled force doth fill While they their spirits summon t' effect their furious will 3 But all in vain they want the inward skill What comes from heaven onely can there ascend Not rage nor tempest that this bulk doth fill Can profit ought but gently to attend The souls still working patiently to bend Our mind to sifting reason and clear light That strangely figur'd in our soul doth wend Shifting its forms still playing in our sight Till something it present that we shall take for right 4 The busie soul it is that thither hent By strength of reason the true distancies Of the erring Planets and the vast extent Of their round bodies without outward eyes Hath view'd told their proportionalities Confounded sense by reasons strange report But wiser he that on reason relies Then stupid sense low-sunken into dirt This weapon I have got none from me may extort 5 O you stiff-standers for ag'd Ptolemee I heartly praise your humble reverence If willingly given to Antiquitie But when of him in whom's your confidence Or your own reason and experience In those same arts you find those things are true That utterly oppugne our outward sense Then are you forc'd to sense to bid adieu Not what your sense gainsayes to holden straight untrue 6 Though contraire unto sense though it be new But sooth to sayen th' earthâ—… motion is of tri'd Antiquitie as I above did shew In Philolaus and in Heraclide Those subtile thoughts of old did close reside Yet reason ought to bear away the bell But irefull ignorance cannot abide To be outtopd reprochfully 't will yell Call's mad when it s own self doth with foul furie swell 7 But let them bark like band-dogs at the moon That mindlesse passeth on in silencie I 'll take my flight above this outward sunne Regardlesse of such fond malignitie Life my self up in the Theologie Of heavenly Plato There I 'll contemplate The Archtype of this sunne that bright Idee Of steddie Good that doth its beams dilate Through all the worlds all lives and beings propagate 8 But yet in words to tride I will deigne A while They may our mind fitly prepare For higher flight we larger breath may gain By a low hovering These words they are All found in that old Oracle of Clare That heavenly power which Iao hight The highest of all the Gods thou mayst declare In spring named Zeus in summer Helios bright In autumne call'd Iao Aides in brumall night 9 These names do plainly denotate the sunne In Spring call'd Zeus from life or kindly heat In winter 'cause the dayes so quickly done He Aides hight he is not long in sight In Summer 'cause he strongly doth us smite With his hot darts then Helios we him name From Eloim or Eloah so hight In Autumne Jao Jehovah is the same So is the word deprav'd by an uncertain fame 10 So great similitude twixt Phoebus light And God that God himself the Nations deem The sun The learned Seventy have boldly pight A tent therein for the true Eloim The sensible Deity you 'll reckon him If Hermes words bear with you any sway Or if you Christian Clerks do ought esteem In Davids odes they make Gods Christ a day His father 's then the sunne from whence this light doth ray 11 Then by all the wide worlds acknowledgement The sunne's a type of that eternall light Which we call God a fair delineament Of that which Good in Plato's school is hight His T'agathon with beauteous rayes be dight Let 's now consult with their Theologie And that Idea with our inward sight Behold casheering sensibility Then in clear reason view this correspondency 12 One steddy Good centre of essencies Unmoved Monad that Apollo hight The Intellectuall sunne whose energies Are all things that appear in vitall light Whose brightnesse passeth every creatures sight Yet round about him stird with gentle fire All things do dance their being action might They thither do direct with strong desire To embosome him with close embracements they aspire 13 Unseen incomprehensible he moves About himself each seeking entity That never yet shall find that which it loves No finite thing shall reach infinity No thing dispers'd comprend that Unity Yet in their ranks they seemly foot it round
Trip it with joy at the worlds harmony Struck with the pleasure of an amorous stound So dance they with fair flowers from unknown root ycrownd 14 Still falling short they never fail to seek Nor find they nothing by their diligence They find repast their lively longings eke Kindled continued by timely influence Thus all things in distinct circumference Move about him that satisfies them all Nor be they thus stird up by wary sense Or foresight or election rationall But blindly reel about the heart of lives centrall 15 So doth the earth one of the erring seven Wheel round the fixed sunne that is the shade Of steddy Good shining in this out-heaven With the rest of those stars that God hath made Of baser matter all which be array'd With his far-shining light They sing for joy They frisque about in circulings unstay'd Dance through the liquid aire and nimbly toy cloy While Sol keeps clear their spright consumes what may ac 16 Better the Indigent be mov'd then He That wanteth nought He fills all things with light And kindly heat through his fecundity Peoples the world by his exciting spright Wakens the plants calls them out of deep night They thrust themselves into his fostring rayes Stretch themselves forth stird by his quickning might And all the while their merry roundelayes As lightsome phansies deem each Planet sprightly playes 17 But sooth to say that sound so subtile is Made by percussion of th' ethereall fire Against our aire if it be not transmisse By its exility that none ought admire That we no'te heare what well we mought desire Heavens harmony ' Cording to others lear The sound 's so big that it cannot retire Into the windings of a mortall eare So cannot the Egyptian Niles Catadupa bear 18 There ought to be certain proportion Betwixt the object and the outward sense Rash man that dost inferre negation From thy dead eare or non-experience Then let them dance and sing raise influence From lively motion that preserves their spright From foul corruption motion 's the best fense To keep off filth in children of cold Night Whose life is in dull matter but the sunne's all Light 19 Therefore full safely he may steddy stond Unmov'd at least not remov'd out of place I 'll not deny but that he may turn round On his own centre So the steps we 'll trace Of Essence Plato's On which steddy stayes And moves at once that same Iao hight In that old Clarian Oracle that sayes It is the sunne This answer will aright To Iehova or first essence as Plato school desery't 20 That same first Being Beauty Intellect Turns to his father of whom he was born In a brief instant But who can detect Such hidden mysteries back mine eyes I 'll turn Lest in this light like fluttering moth I burn Enough is shown of correspondency Twixt this worlds sunne and centre of hid Morn The radiant light of the deep Deity Thus have I fairly prov'd the sunnes stability 21 Then must the earth turn round or we want day Or never be in night Now I 'll descend Cloth'd with this truth As wrathfull dogs do bay At spectres solemn Cynthia doth send So now I backward to the senses wend They 'll bark at th' shape of my disguised mind As stranger wights they wrathfully will rend This uncouth habit They no such thing find 'Mongst their domestick forms to whom they are more kind 22 And weaker reason which they wont misguide Will deem all this nothing mysterious But my strong-winged Muse feebly to slide Into false thoughts and dreams vertiginous And plainly judge us woxen furious Thus in our rage to shake the stable earth Whirling it round with turns prodigious For it doth stedfast stand as it appear'th From the unshaken buildings it so safely bear'th 23 If it should move about then would it sting From of it self those fair extructed loads Of carved stone The aire aloud would sing With brushing trees Beasts in their dark aboads Would brained be by their own caves th' earth strowd With strange destruction All would shatter'd lye In broken shivers What mad frantick mood Doth thus invade wary Philosophy That it so dotes on such a furious falsity 24 But still more subt'lie this cause to pursue The clouds would alwayes seem to rise from th' East Which sense and oft-experience proves untrue They rise from all the quarters South North West From every part as Aeolus thinketh best Again the earths sad stupid gravity Unfit for motion shows its quiet rest Lastly an arrow shot unto the sky Would not return unto his foot that let it fly 25 Adde unto these that contrariety Of motion when as the self same things At the same time do back and forward hie As when for speed the rider fiercely dings His horse with iron heel layes the loose strings Upon his neck westward they swiftly scoure When as the earth finishing her dayly rings Doth eastward make with all her might and power She quite hath run her stage at end of twice twelve houres 26 These and like phansies do so strongly tye The slower mind to ancient Ptolemee That shamefull madnesse't were for to deny So plain a truth as they deem this to be But yet alas if they could standen free From prejudice and heavie swaying sense That dims our reason that it cannot see What 's the pure truth enough in just defense Of Pythagore we find though with small diligence 27 One single truth concerning unity Of sprights and bodies how one spirit may Inact a various Corporeity Keep 't up together and its might display Through all the bulk make 't constantly obey The powerfull dictates of that centrall spright Which being one can variously play This lore if we but once had learnd aright All what was brought against us would vanish at first sight 28 For that Magnetick might doth so combine Earth Water Aire into one Animate Whose soul or life so sweetly't doth incline So surely easly as none can relate But he that 's exercis'd in every state Of moving life What Can the plastick spright So variously it and its bulk dilate Downward to hell upward to heaven bright And strangely figur'd leaves and flowers send into sight 29 Can one poore single Centre do all this In a base weed that suddenly decayes And shall not the earths life that is transmisse Through sea and aire and with its potent rayes Informs all this all this on that life stayes Shall 't not obtain the like variety Of inward ruling motion Your minds raise O sluggish men single centrality You 'l find shall do what ere 's admit by phantasy 30 Now see if this clear apprehension Will not with ease repell each argument Which we rehers'd with an intention For to refute The earths swift movement Because 't is naturall not violent Will never shatter buildings With straight line It binds down strongly each partic'larment Of every edifice All stones incline Unto that Centre this doth
spoke my mind so fully before The motives that drevv me to adde them to the former are exprest in the Poems themselves My drift is one in them all vvhich is to raise a certain number of vvell ordered Phantasms fitly shaped out and vvarily contrived vvhich I set to skirmish and conflict vvith all the furious phansies of Epicurisine and Atheisme But here 's my disadvantage that victory vvill be no victory unlesse the adversary acknovvledge himself overcome None can acknovvledge himself overcome unlesse he perceive the strength and feel the stroke of the more povverfull arguments But the exility and subtletie of many and that not of the meanest is such nor can they be othervvise that they vvill as that kind of thunder vvhich the Poets do commonly call 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 from it s over quick and penetrating energie go through their more porous and spongie minds vvithout any sensible impression Sure I am that sensuality is alvvayes an enemy to subtilty of reason vvhich hath its rise from subtilty of phansie so that the life of the body being vigorous and radiant in the soul hinders us of the sight of more attenuate phantasms But that being supprest or very much castigate and kept under our inward apprehension grows clearer and larger Few men can imagine any thing so clearly awake as they did when they were asleep And what 's the reason but that the sense of the body is then bound up or dead in a manner The dark glasse-windows will afford us a further illustration for this purpose Why is it that we see our ovvn faces there by night What can reflect the species as they phrase it when the glasse is pervious and transparent Surely reflection in the ordinary apprehension is but a conceit The darknesse behind the glasse is enough to exhibit visibly the forms of things within by hiding stronger objects from the eye which would burie these weak idola in their â—…ore orient lustre The starres shine and fill the aire with their species by day but are to be seen onely in a deep pit which may fence the Sunnes light from striking our sight so strongly Every contemptible candle conquers the beams of the Moon by the same advantage that the Sunnes doth the Starres viz. propinquitie But put out the candle and you will presently find the moon-light in the room exclude the moon and then the feeblest of all species will step out into energie we shall behold the night All this is but to shew how the stronger or nearer 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 doth obscure the weaker or further off and how that one being removed the energie ' of the other will easily appear Now that our comparison may be the fitter let us consider what Aristotle saith of phansie that it is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Thus much I will take of him that Phansie is sense and adde to it that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is also 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and what I have intimated in some passages of these Poems That the soul doth alwayes feel it self it s own actuall Idea by its omniform centrall self So that the immediate sense of the soul is nothing else but to perceive its own energie Now sith that that which we call outward sense is indeed the very energie of the soul and inward sense which is phansie can be but the very energie of the soul there seems to be no reall and intrinsecall difference betwixt the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of any form no more then there is betwixt a frog born by the Sunne and mere slime and one born by copulation For these are but extrinsecall relations Wherefore 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the soul it self is all one But now sith it is the same nature why is there not the same degree of energie in both I say there is as appears plainly in sleep where we find all as clear and energeticall as when we wake But here these 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 for I have prov'd them all one do as greater and lesser lights dim one another or that which is nearest worketh strongliest Hence it is that the light or life of this low spirit or body of ours stirring the soul into a perpetuall sensuall energie if we foster this and unite our minds will and animadversion with it will by its close nearnesse with the soul dim and obscure those more subtil and exile phantasms or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 risen from the soul it self or occasioned by other mens writings For they will be in the flaring light or life of the body as the stars in the beams of the Sunne scarce to be seen unlesse we withdraw our selves out of the flush vigour of that light into the profunditie of our own souls as into some deep pit Wherefore men of the most tam'd and castigate spirits are of the best and most profound judgement because they can so easily withdraw themselves from the life and impulse of the lower spirit of this body Thus being quit of passion they have upon any occasion a clear though still and quiet representation of every thing in their minds upon which pure bright sydereall phantasms unprejudiced reason may safely work and clearly discern what is true or probable If my vvritings fall into the hands of men othervvise qualified I shall gain the lesse approbation But if they vvill endeavour to compose themselves as near as they can to this temper though they vvere of another opinion then vvhat my writings intend to prove I doubt not but they vvill have the happinesse to be overcome and to prove gainers by my victorie To say any thing more particularly concerning these last I hold it needlesse Onely let me excuse my self if any chance to blame me for my 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as confuting that which no man will assert For it hath been asserted by some as those Mauri whom Ficinus speaks of and the question is also discussed by Plotinus in his fourth Ennead where he distinguisheth of all souls being one after this manner 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The latter member is that vvhich my arguments conclude against Though they vvere 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 yet vvere vve safe enough as safe as the beams of the Sunne the Sunne existing But the similitude of Praxiteles broken glasse is brought in according to the apprehension of such as make the image to vanish into nothing the glasse being taken away and that as there is but one face though there be the appearances of many so though there be the appearances of many souls by reason of that ones vvorking in divers bodies yet there is but one soul and understanding sense and motion to be the acts of this one soul informing severall bodies This is that which both Plotinus and I endeavour to destroy vvhich is of great moment For if one onely soul act in
every body vvhat ever vve are novv surely this body laid in the dust vve shall be nothing As for the Oracles ansvver to Amelius if any vulgar conceited man think it came from a devil with bats vvings and a long tail the Seventies translation of the eighth verse of 32 chapter of Deuteronomie may make it at least doubtfull When the most high divided to the nations their inheritance when he separated the sonnes of Adam he set the bounds of the people 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 He did not then deliver them into the hand and jurisdiction of devils nor to be instructed and taught by them But if Apollo who gave so good a testimony of Socrates vvhile he vvas living and of Plotinus after his death vvas some foul fiend yet t is no prejudice to their esteem since our Saviour Christ vvas acknovvledged by the devil But I have broke my vvord by not breaking off my speech before this Reader t is time novv to leave thee to the perusall of my vvritings vvhich if they chance to please thee I repent me not of my pains if they chance not to please that shall not displease me much for I consider that I also with small content and pleasure have read the vvritings of other men Yours H. M. THE ARGUMENT OF ANTIPSYCHOPANNYCHIA Cant. I. Adams long sleep will mind compar'd With low vitality The fondnesse plainly have unbar'd Of Psychopannychie 1 THe souls ever durancy I sung before Ystruck with mighty rage A powerfull sire Held up my lively Muse and made her soar So high that mortall wit I fear she 'll tire To trace her Then a while I did respire But now my beating veins new force again Invades and holy fury doth inspire Thus stirred up I 'll adde a second strain Lest what afore was said may seem all spoke in vain 2 For sure in vain do humane souls exist After this life if lull'd in listles sleep They senselesse lie wrapt in eternall mist Bound up in foggy clouds that ever weep Benumming tears and the souls centre steep With deading liquour that she never minds Or feeleth ought Thus drench'd in Lethe deep Nor misseth she her self nor seeks nor finds Her self This mirksome state all the souls actions binds 3 Desire fear love joy sorrow pleasure pain Sense phancy wit forecasting providence Delight in God and what with sleepy brain Might sute slight dreams all banish'd far from hence Nor pricking nor applauding conscience Can wake the soul from this dull Lethargie That 'twixt this sleepy state small difference You 'll find and that men call Mortality Plain death 's as good as such a Psychopannychie 4 What profiteth this bare existency If I perceive not that I do exist Nought longs to such nor mirth nor misery Such stupid beings write into one list With stocks and stones But they do not persist You 'll say in this dull dead condition But must revive shake off this drow sie mist At that last shrill loud-sounding clarion Which cleaves the trembling earth rives monuments of stone 5 Has then old Adam snorted all this time Under some senselesse sod with sleep ydead And have those flames that steep Olympus climbe Right nimbly wheeled o're his heedlesse head So oft in heaps of years low-buried And yet can ken himself when he shall rise Wakend by piercing trump that farre doth shed Its searching sound If we our memories And wit do lose by sicknesse falls sloth lethargies 6 If all our childhood quite be waste away With its impressions so that we forget What once we were so soon as age doth sway Our bowed backs sure when base worms have eat His mouldring brains and spirits have retreat From whence they came spread in the common fire And many thousand sloping sunnes have set Since his last fall into his ancient mire How he will ken himself reason may well admire 7 For he must know himself by some impression Left in his ancient body unwash'd out Which seemeth strange For can so long succession Of sliding years that great Colosses mought Well moulder into dust spare things ywrought So slightly as light phantasms in our brain Which oft one yeare or moneth have wrenched out And left no footsteps of that former stain No more then 's of a cloud quite melted into rain 8 And shall not such long series of time When Nature hath dispread our vitall spright And turn'd our body to its ancient slime Quite wash away what ever was empight In that our spirit If bulk and soul unite Lose such impressions as were once deep seald And fairly glisterd like to comets bright In our blew Chaos if the soul congeald With her own body lose these forms as I reveald 9 Then so long time of their disjunction The body being into dust confract The spright diffus'd spread by dispersion And such Lethean sleep that doth contract The souls hid rayes that it doth nothing act Must certainly wipe all those forms away That sense or phansie ever had impact So that old Adam will in vain assay To find who here he was he 'll have no memorie 10 Nor can he tell that ere he was before And if not tell he 's as if then first born If as first born his former life's no store Yet when men wake they find themselves at morn But if their memory away were worn With one nights sleep as much as doth respect Themselves these men they never were beforn This day 's their birth day they cannot conject They ever liv'd till now much lesse the same detect 13 So when a man goes hence thus may he say As much as me concerns I die now quite Adiew good self for now thou goest away Nor can I possibly thee ever meet Again not ken thy face nor kindly greet Sleep and dispersion spoyls our memory So my dear self hence forth I cannot weet Wherefore to me it 's perfectly to die Though subtiler Wits do call 't but Psychopannychie 12 Go now you Psychopannychites perswade To comely virtues and pure piety From hope of joy or fear of penance sad Men promptly may make answer Who shall try That pain or pleasure When death my dim eye Shall close I sleep not sensible of ought And tract of time at least all memory Will quite debarre that reacquainten mought My self with mine own self if so my self I sought 13 But I shall neither seek my self nor find My self unsought Therefore not deprehend My self in joy or wo. Men ought to mind What longs unto them But when once an end Is put unto this life and fate doth rend Our retinence what follows nought at all Belongs to us what need I to contend And my frail spright with present pain to gall For what I nere shall judge my self did ere befall 14 This is the uncouth state of sleeping soul Thus weak of its own self without the prop Of the base body that it no'te out-roll Its vitall raies those raies death down doth lop And all its goodly
beauty quite doth crop With its black claws Wisdome love piety Are straight dried up death doth their fountain stop This is those sleepers dull Philosophy Which fairly men invites to foul impiety 15 But if we grant which in my former song I plainly prov'd that the souls energic Pends not on this base corse but that self-strong She by her self can work then when we sly The bodies commerce no man can deny But that there is no interruption Of life where will puts on there doth she hie Or if she 's carried by coaction That force yet she observes by presse adversion 16 And with most lively touch doth feel and find Her self For either what she most doth love She then obtains or else with crosse unkind Contrary life since her decease she hath strove That keeps her wake and with like might doth move To think upon her self and in what plight She 's fallen And nothing able to remove Deep searching vengeance groans in this sad Night And rores and raves and storms with her self doth fight 17 But hearty love of that great vitall spright The sacred fount of holy sympathy Prepares the soul with its deep quickning might To leave the bodyes vain mortality Away she flies into Eternity Finds full accomplishment of her strong desire Each thing would reach its own centrality So Earth with Earth and Moon with Moon conspire Our selves live most when most we feed our Centrall fire 18 Thus is the soul continually in life Withouten interruption If that she Can operate after the fatall knife Hath cut the cords of this bulks sympathy Which she can do if that some energy She exercise immur'd in this base clay Which on this bulk hath no dependency For then the like she 'll do that done away These independent acts its time now to display 19 All comprehending Will proportionate To whatsoever shall fall by Gods decree Or prudent sufferance sweetly spread dilate Stretch'd out to embrace each act or entity That creep from hidden cause that none can see With outward eyes Next Intellect whose hight Of working 's then when as it stands most free From sense and grosser phansie deep empight In this vild corse which to purg'd minds yields small delight 20 Both Will and Intellect-then worketh best When sense and appetite be consopite And grosser phansie lull'd in silent test Then Will grown full with a mild heavenly light Shines forth with goodly mentall rayes bedight And finds and feels such things as never pen Can setten down so that unexpert wight May reade and understand Experienc'd men Do onely know who like impressions sustain 21 So far 's the soul from a dependency In these high actions on the body base And further signe is want of memory Of these impressions wrought in heavenly place I mean the holy Intellect they passe Leaving no footsteps of their former light When as the soul from thence descended has Which is a signe those forms be not empight In our low proper Chaos or Corporeall spright 22 For then when we our mind do downward bend Like things we here should find but all is gone Soon as our flagging souls so low descend As that straight spright Like torch that droppeth down From some high tower hold steddy clearly shone But in its fall leaves all its light behind Lies now in darknesse on the grail or stone Or dirty earth That erst so fully shin'd Within a glowing coal hath now its light confin'd 23 So doth the soul when from high Intellect To groveling sense she takes her stooping flight Falling into her body quite neglect Forget forgo her former glorious sight Grosse glowing fire for that wide shining light For purest love foul fury and base passion For clearest knowledge fell contentious fight Sprong from some scorching false inust impression Which she 'll call truth she gains O witlesse Commutation 24 But still more clear her independent might In understanding and pure subtile will To prove I will assay t' explain aright The difference ' cording to my best skill 'Twixt these and those base faculties that well From union with the low vitality Of this out-world that when my curious quill Hath well describ'd their great disparity To th' highest we may give an independency 25 The faculties we deem corporeall And bound unto this earthy instrument So bound that they no'te operate at all Without the body there immerse and meint Be hearing feeling tasting sight and sent Adde lower phansie Mundane memory Those powers be all or more or lesse ypent In this grosse life We 'll first their property Set down and then the others contrariety 26 This might perceives not its own instrument The taste discovers not the spungy tongue Nor is the Mundane spright through all extent From whence are sense and lower phansie sprong Perceived by the best of all among These learned five nor yet by phantasie Nor doth or this or those so nearly throng Unto themselves as by propinquity To apprehend themselves They no'te themselves descry 27 Nor ever learnd they their own energie The mind held somewhere else in open sight What ever lies unknown unto the eye It lies though there its image be empight Till that our soul look on that image right Wherefore themselves the senses do not know Nor doth our phansie for each furious wight Hath phansie full enough so full't doth show As sense nor he nor 's phansie doth that phansie know 28 Age potent objects too long exercise Do weaken hurt and much debilitate Those lower faculties The Sun our eyes Confounds with dazeling beams of light so that For a good while we cannot contemplate Ought visible thus thunder deafs the eare And age hurts both that doth quite ruinate Our sense and phansie so if long we heare Or see 't sounds not so sweet nor can we see so clear 29 Lastly the Senses reach but to one kind Of things The eye sees colours so the eare Hears sounds the nostrills snuff perfumed wind What grosse impressions the out-senses bear The phansie represents sometimes it dare Make unseen shapes with uncouth transformation Such things as never in true nature are But all this while the phansies operation Is bound to law of bodies such is her figurat on 30 This is the nature of those faculties That of the lower Mundane spright depend But in our Intellect farre otherwise We'st see it if we pressely will attend And trace the parallels unto the end There 's no self-knowledge Here the soul doth find Her self If so then without instrument For what more fit to show our inward mind Then our own mind But if 't be otherwise defind 31 Then tell me Knows she that fit instrument If the kens not that instrument how can She judge whether truly it doth represent Her self there may be foul delusion But if she kens this organ straight upon This grant I 'll ask how kens she this same tole What by another by what that so go on Till to infinity you
What scruple then remains that moven might Least doubt but that she wakes with open eye When fate her from this body doth untie Wherefore her choisest forms do then arise Rowz'd up by union and large sympathy With Gods own spright she plainly then descries Such plenitude of life as she could nere devise 3 If God even on this body operate And shakes this Temple when he doth descend Or with sweet vigour doth irradiate And lovely light and heavenly beauty lend Such rayes from Moses face did once extend Themselves on Sinai hill where he did get Those laws from Gods own mouth mans life to mend And from Messias on mount Saron set Farre greater beauty shone in his disciples sight 4 Al 's Socrates when his large Intellect Being fill'd with streaming light from God above To that fair sight his soul did close collect That inward lustre through the body drove Bright beams of beauty These examples prove That our low being the great Deity Invades and powerfully doth change and move Which if you grant the souls divinity More fitly doth receive so high an energy 5 And that God doth illuminate the mind Is well approv'd by all antiquity With them Philosophers and Priests we find All one or else at least Philosophy Link'd with Gods worship and pure piety Witnesse Pythagoras Aglaophemus Zoroaster thrice-mighty Mercury Wise Socrates nothing injurious Religious Plato and vice-taming Orpheus 6 All these addicted to religion Acknowledg'd God the fount of verity From whence flows out illumination Upon purg'd souls But now O misery To seek to God is held a phantasie But men hug close their loved lust and vice And deem that thraldome a sweet liberty Wherefore reproch and shame they do devise Against the braver souls that better things emprise 7 But lo a proof more strong and manifest Few men but will confesse that prophesie Proceeds from God when as our soul 's possest By his all-seeing spright al 's ecstasie Wherein the soul snatch'd by the Deity And for a time into high heaven hent Doth contemplate that blest Divinity So Paul and John that into Patmos went Heard and saw things inestimably excellent 8 Such things as these men jointly do confesse To be from Gods immediate energie But if that God ought on the soul impresse Before it be at perfect liberty Quite rent from this base body when that she Is utterly releast she 'll be more fit To be inform'd by that divine Idee Hight Logos that doth every man enlight That enters into life as speaks the sacred Writ 9 Behold a fit resemblance of this truth The Sunne begetteth both colours and sâ—…ght Each living thing with life his heat indew'th He kindles into act each plastick spright Thus he the world with various forms doth dight And when his vigour hath fram'd out an eye In any living wight he fills with light That organ which can plainly then descry The forms that under his far-shining beams do ly 10 Even so it is with th' intellectuall sunne Fountain of life and all-discovering light He frames our souls by his creation Al 's he indews them with internall sight Then shines into them by his lucid spright But corporall life doth so obnubilate Our inward eyes that they be nothing bright While in this muddy world 〈◊〉 They lie and with blind passions be intoxicate 11 Fear anger hope fierce vengeance and swoln hate Tumultuous joy envy and discontent Self-love vain-glory strife and fell debate Unsatiate covetise desire impotent Low-sinking grief pleasure lust violent Fond emulation all these dim the mind That with foul filth the inward eye yblent That light that is so near it cannot find So shines the Sunne unseen on a trees rugged rind 12 But the clean soul by virtue purifi'd Collecting its own self from the foul steem Of earthly life is often dignify'd With that pure pleasure that from God doth streem Often's enlighten'd by that radiant beam That issues forth from his divinity Then feelingly immortall she doth deem Her self conjoynd by so near unity With God and nothing doubts of her eternity 13 Nor death nor sleep nor any dismall shade Of low contracting life she then doth fear No troubled thoughts her settled mind invade Th' immortall root of life she seeth clear Wisheth she were for ever grafted here No cloud no darknesse no deficiency In this high heavenly life doth ere appear Redundant fulnesse and free liberty Easie flowing knowledge never weary energy 14 Broad open sight eternall wake fulnesse Withouten labour or consuming pain The soul all these in God must needs possesse When there deep-rooted life she doth obtain As I in a few words shall maken plain This bodies life by powerfull sympathy The soul to sleep and labour doth constrain To grief to wearinesse and anxiety In fine to hideous sense of dread mortality 15 But sith no such things in the Deity Are to be found She once incorporate With that quick essence she is setten free From ought that may her life obnubilate What then can her contract or maken strait For ever mov'd by lively sympathy With Gods own spright an ever-waking state She doth obtain Doth heavens bright blazing eye Ever close ywrapt in sleep and dead obscurity 16 But now how full and strong a sympathy Is caused by the souls conjunction VVith the high God I 'll to you thus descry All men will grant that spread dispersion Must be some hinderance to close union Al 's must confesse that closer unity More certainly doth breed compassion Not that there 's passion in the Deity But something like to what all men call Sympathy 17 Now sith the soul is of such subtlety And close collectednesse indispersion Full by her centrall omniformity Pregnant and big without distension She once drawn in by strong attraction Should be more perfectly there counite In this her high and holy union Then with the body where dispersion's pight But such hard things I leave to some more learned wight 18 The first pure Being's perfect unity And therefore must all things more strongly bind Then lives corporeall which dispersed be He also the first Goodnesse is defin'd Wherefore the soul most powerfully's â—…nclin'd And strongly drawn to God But life that 's here When into it the soul doth closely wind Is often sneep'd by anguish and by fear With vexing pain and rage that she no'â—… easly bear 19 Farre otherwise it fares in that pure life That doth result in the souls Unitie With God For there the faster she doth strive To tie herself the greater libertie And freer welcome brighter puritie She finds and more enlargement joy and pleasure Overflowing yet without satietie Sight without end and love withouten measure This needs must close unite the heart to that hid treasure 20 This plainly's seen in that mysterious Cone Which I above did fairly well descrive There freenesse and incarceration Were plainly setten forth What down doth dive Into the straitned Cuspis needs must strive With
stringent bitternesse vexation Anxious unrest in this ill plight they live But they that do ascend to th' top yflown Be free yet fast unite to that fair vision 21 Thus purged souls be close conjoynd to God And closer union surer sympathie Wherefore so long as they make their abode In Him incorporate by due Unitie They liven in eternall energie For Israels God nor slumbers nor doth sleep Nor Israel lost in dull lethargie Must listlesse lie while numbing streams do steep His heavy head overwhelmed in oblivion deep 22 But here more curious men will straight enquire Whither after death the wicked soul doth go That long hath wallowed in the sinfull mire Before this question I shall answer to Again the nature of the soul I 'll show She all things in herself doth centrally Contain what ever she doth feel or know She feels or knows it by th' innate Idee She 's allproportion'd by her omniformitie 23 God heaven this middle world deep-glimmering hell With all the lives and shapes that there remain The forms of all in humane souls do dwell She likewise all proportions doth contain That sits her for all sprights So they constrain By a strong pulling sympathie to come And straight possesse that fitting vitall vein That 'longs unto her so her proper roon She takes as mighty Nemesis doth give the doom 24 Now which I would you presly should observe Though oft I have with tongue balbutient Prattled to th' weaker care lest I should sterve My style with too much subtiltie I nere ment To grant there 's any such thing existent As a mere body For all 's life all spright Though lives and sprights be very different Three generall sprights there be â—…ternall light Is one the next our World the last Infernall Night 26 This last lies next unto old Nothingnesse Hight Hyle whom I term'd point of the Cone Her daughter Night is full of bitternesse And strait constraint and pent privation Her sturdie ray's scarce conquer'd by the moon The earths great shade breaks out from this hid spright And active is so soon the Sunne is gone Doth repossesse the aire shotten forth right From its hid centrall life ycleep'd Infernall Night 26 In this drad world is scorching Phlegelâ—…n Hot without flame burning the vexed sense There hatefull Styx and sad Cocytus run And silent Acheron All drink from hence From this damn'd spright receiven influence That in our world or poyson do outspue Or have an uggly shape and foul presence That deadly poison and that direfull hue From this Nocturnall spright these uggly creatures drew 27 This is the seat of Gods eternall ire When unmixt vengeance he doth fully powre Upon foul souls fit for consuming fire Fierce storms and tempests strongly doth he showre Upon their heads His rage doth still devoure The never-dying soul. Here Satanas Hath his full swing to torture every houre The grisly ghosts of men when they have passe From this mid world to that most direfull dismall place 28 Did Nature but compile one mighty sphere Of this dark Stygian spright and close collect Its scatter'd being that it might appear Aloft in the wide heaven it would project Dark powerfull beams that solar life ycheckt With these dull choking rayes all things would die Infernall poyson the earth would infect Incessant showrs of pitchie shafts let flie Against the Sunne with darknesse would involve the skie 29 Nor is my Muse wox mad that thus gives life To Night or Darknesse sith all things do live But Night is nothing straight I 'll end that strife Doth nought impressions to the sense derive If without prejudice you 'll deigne to dive Into the matter as much realtie To darknesse as to coldnesse you will give Both Night and Coldnesse have their energie Both strike the sense they both have reall entitie 30 Again 't is plain that that nocturnall spright Sends forth black eben-beams and mirksome rayes Because her darknesse as the Sunne his light More clearly doth reflect on solid place As when a wall a shade empighten has Upon it sure that shade farre darker is Then is the aire that lies in the mid space What is the reason but that rayes emisse From centrall Night the walls reflection multiplies 31 The light 's more light that strikes upon the wall And much more strongly there affects the eye Then what 's spread in the space aereall So 't is with shadows that amid do lie In the slight aire there scarce we them descrie But when they fall upon the wall or ground They gain a perfect sensibilitie Scarce ought in outgone light is to be found But this Nocturnall ray's with like indowments crown'd 32 But why doth my half-wearied mind pursue Dim sculking darknesse a fleet nimble shade If Moses and wise Solomon speak true What we assert may safely well be said Did not a palpable thick Night invade The Land of Egypt such as men might feel And handle with their hands That darknesse ray'd From nether Hell and silently did steal On th' enemies of God as Scripture doth reveal 33 The womb of Night then fully flowred cut For that all-swaying endlesse Majestie Which penetrateth those wide worlds throughout This thin spread darknesse that dispers'd doth lie Summon'd by his drad voice and strong decree Much therefore of that spirit close uâ—…te Into one place did strike the troubled eye With horrid blacknesse and the hand did smite With a clam pitchie ray shot from that Centrall Night 34 This Centrall Night or Universall spright Of wo of want of balefull bitternesse Of hatred envy wrath and fell despight Of lust of care wasting disquietnesse Of warre contention and bloud-thirstinesse Of zeal of vengeance of suspicion Of hovering horrour and sad pensivenesse This Stygian stream through all the world doth run And many wicked souls unto it self hath wonne 35 Lo here 's the portion of the Hypocrite That serveth God but in an outward show But his drad doom must passe upon his spright Where it propends there surely must he go Due vengeance neither sleepeth nor is slow Hell will suck in by a strong sympathie What 's like unto it self So down they flow Devouring anguish and anxietie Do vex their souls in piteous pains alas they lie 36 Thus with live Hell be they concorporate United close with that self-gnawing spright And this I wote will breed no sleeping state Who here descends finds one long restlesse Night May this the dreaming Psychopannychite Awake and make him seriously prepare And purge his heart lest this infernall might Suck in his soul 'fore he be well aware Kill but the seeds of sinne then are you past this fear 37 Thus have I prov'd by the souls union With heaven and hell that she will be awake When she from this mid Nature is ygone But still more curious task to undertake And spenden time to speak of Lethe lake And whether at least some souls fall not a sleep Which if they do of Hell they do
partake Whether who liv'd like plant or grazing sheep Who of nought else but sloth and growth doth taken keep 38 Whose drooping phansie never flowred out Who relish'd nought but this grosse bodies food Who never entertaind an active thought But like down-looking beasts was onely mov'd To feed themselves whither this drousie mood So drench the lowring soul and inly sleep That she lies senselesse drownd in Lethe floud Who will let dive into this mysterie deep Into such narrow subtilties I list not creep 39 But well I wote that wicked crueltie Hate envie malice and ambition Bloud-sucking zeal and lawlesse tyrannie In that Nocturnall spright shall have their wonne Which like this world admits distinction But like will like unto it strongly draw So every soul shall have a righteous doom According to our deeds God will bestow Rewards Unto the cruell he 'll no mercie show 40 Where 's Nimrod now and dreadfull Hannibal Where 's that ambitious pert Pellean lad Whose pride sweld bigger then this earthly ball Where 's cruel Nero with the rest that had Command and vex'd the world with usage bad They 're all sunk down into this nether hell Who erst upon the Nations stoutly strad Are now the Devils footstool His drad spell Those vassals doth command though they with furie swell 41 Consuming anguish styptick bitternesse Doth now so strangle their imperious will That in perpetuall disquietnesse They roll and rave and roar and rage their fill Like a mad bull that the slie hunters skill Hath caught in a strong net But more they strive The more they kindle that tormenting ill Woe 's me in what great miserie they live Yet wote I not what may these wretched thralls relieve 42 The safest way for us that still survive Is this even our own lust to mortifie So Gods own Will will certainly revive Thus shall we gain a perfect libertie And everlasting life But if so be We seek our selves with ardent hot desire From that Infernall Night we are not free But living Hell will kindle a fierce fire And with uncessant pains our vexed soul will tire 43 Then the wild phansie from its horrid wombe Will senden forth foul shapes O horrid sight Overgrown toads fierce serpents thence will come Red-scaled Dragons with deep burning light In their hollow eye-pits With these she must fight Then thinks her self ill wounded sorely stung Old fulsome hags with scabs and skurf bedight Foul tarry spittle tumbling with their tongue On their raw lether lips these near will to her clung 44 And lovingly salute against her will Closely embrace and make her mad with wo She 'd lever thousand times they did her kill Then force her such vile basenesse undergo Anon some Giant his huge self will show Gaping with mouth as vast as any cave With stony staring eyes and footing slow She surely deems him her live-walking grave From that dern hollow pit knows not her self to save 45 After a while tost on the Ocean main A boundlesse sea she finds of misery The fiery snorts of the Leviathan That makes the boyling waves before him fly She hears she sees his blazing morn-bright eye If here she scape deep gulfs and threatning rocks Her frighted self do straightway terrifie Steel-coloured clouds with rattling thunder knocks With these she is amaz'd and thousand such like mocks 46 All which afflict her even like perfect sense For waxen mad with her sore searching pain She cannot easly find the difference But toils and tears and tugs 〈◊〉 all in vain Her self from her own self she cannot strain Nocturnall life hath now let ope th' idee Of innate darknesse from this fulsome vein The soul is fill'd with all deformity But Night doth stirre her up to this dread energie 47 But here some man more curious then wise Perhaps will ask where Night or Hell may be For he by his own self cannot devise Sith chearfull light doth fill the open sky And what 's the earth to the souls subtilty Such men I 'd carry to some standing pool Down to the water bid them bend their eye They then shall see the earth possest and full Of heaven dight with the sunne or starres that there do roll 48 Or to an hill where 's some deep hollow cave Dreadfull for darknesse let them take a glasse When to the pitchie hole they turned have Their instrument that darknesse will find place Even in the open sunne-beams at a space Which measures twice the glasses distancy From the caves mouth This well discovered has How Hell and Heaven may both together lie Sith darknesse safely raies even in the sunnie skie 49 But cease my restlesse Muse be not so free Thy chiefest end thou hadst accomplished Long since shak'd of the Psychopannychie And rouz'd the soul from her dull drousiehead So nothing now in death is to be dred Of him that wakes to truth and righteousnesse The bulk lies here the soul aloft is fled Unto the fount of perfect happinesse Full freedome joy and peace she lively doth possesse The Argument of ANTIMONOPS YC HIA. The all-devouring Unity Of souls I here disprove Show how they bear their memory With them when they remove 1 WHo yields himself to learning and the Muse Is like a man that leaves the steddy shore And skims the sea He nought then can refuse What ever is design'd by Neptunes power Is fiercely drove in every stormy stoure Slave to the water and the whisling wind Even so am I that whylom meant recover The wished land but now against my mind Am driven fiercely back and so new work do find 2 What though the Rationall soul immortall be And safely doth exist this bulk being gone And then existing hath full energie Perfectly wake if all souls be but one Or though a number if oblivion Of all things past put them in such a state That they can no-wise guesse that ere upon This earth they trode even this seems to abate Their happinesse They 'll deem themselves then first create 3 Wherefore to ease us of this double doubt With mighty force great Phoebus doth inspire My raving mind He 'll bear me strongly out Till I have perfected his own desire Nor will he suffer me once to respire Till I have brought this song unto an end O may it be but short though a quick fire Such rage and rapture makes the body bend Doth waste its fading strength and fainting spirits spend 4 Now comes the story of Praxitele Into my mind whom looking in a glasse With surly countenance it did much displease That any should so sourely him outface Yet whom he saw his dogged self it was Tho he with angry fist struck his own shade Thus he the harmlesse miroir shattered has To many shivers the same shapes invade Each piece so he a many surly sad faces made 5 These shapes appeard from the division Of the broke glasse so rasher phansies deem The Rationall soul whom they suppose but one By the divided matter many
God then they alone Did make themselves and every rolling starre For God alone made these and God himself they are 23 Before the Sunne and all the host of heaven The earth the sea and mans deep centrall spright Before all these were made was not God even With his own self what then him moven might To waste his words and say Let there be light If the accomplishment of all things be That all be God himself This is not right No more perfection no more energie There will be then then at the former nullity 24 Or will you say that God himself delights To do and undo But how can this stand With self-sufficiency There 's nought that might Adde to his happinesse if I understand His Nature right But he with open hand Doth easly feed the Creature that he made As easly Wherefore if the truth be scand This Goodnesse would that nought should be decay'd His mind is all should live no life he would should fade 25 But if the finall consummation Of all things make the Creature Deiform As Plato's school doth phrase it there is none That thence need fear to come to any harm For God himself will then inact inform And quicken humane souls at the last day And though the devill rore and rage and storm Yet deaths drad power shall be done away Nor living Night on men its poysonous beams shall ray 26 He hasten it that makes that glorious day For certainly it is no fearfull thing But unto pride and love of this base clay It 's their destruction but the perfecting Of the just souls It unto them doth bring Their full desire to be more close unite With God and utter cleans'd from all their sin Long was the world involv'd in cloudy Night But at the last will shine the perfect Christian light 27 Thus the souls numerous plurality I have prov'd and shew'd she is not very God But yet a decent Deiformity Have given her thus in the middle trod I safely went and fairly well have row'd As yet Part of my voyage is to come Which is to prove that the souls new aboad In heaven or hell what ever is her doom Nought hinders but past forms even there again may bloom 28 Which if they did not she could never tell Why she were thus rewarded wherefore â—…ll Or good she doth enjoy whether ill or well She lived here Remembrance death did spill But otherwise it fares as was her will And inclination of her thirsty spright Impressions of like nature then doth fill Her lively mind whether with sad affright Disturb'd which she long feard or in hop'd-for delight 29 The life that here most strongly kindled was Sith she awakes in death must needs betray The soul to what nearest affinity has With her own self and likenesses do sway The mind to think of what ever did play In her own self with a like shape or form And contraries do help the memory So if the soul be left in case forlorn Remembrance of past joy makes her more deeply mourn 30 'T is also worth our observation That higher life doth ever comprehend The lower energie sensation The soul some fitten hint doth promptly lend To find out plantall life sense is retaind In subtiller manner in the phantasie Al 's reason phantasies doth well perpend Then must the highest of all vitality Contain all under life Thus is there Memory 31 This faculty is very intimate And near the Centre very large and free Extends it self to whatsoever that The soul peracts There is no subtilty Of Intellect of Will no energy Of Sense nor uncouth strange impression From damned Night or the blest Deity But of all these she hath retention And of their former being makes a prompt agnition 32 This memorie the very bond of life You may well deem If it were cut away Our being truly then you might contrive Into a point of time The former day Were nought at all to us when once we lay Our selves to sleep we should not know at morn That e're we were before nor could we say A whit of sense so soon as off we turn One word that 's quite forgot Coherence thus is torn 33 Now sith it is of such necessitie And is the bundle of the souls duration The watchman of the soul lest it should flie Or steal from its own self a sure fixation And Centrall depth it hath and free dilation That it takes notice of each energie Of intellect sense or imagination Wherefore this virtue no dependencie Hath of this body must be safe when it doth die 34 But if dispersed lifes collection Which is our memorie safely survive Which well it may sith it depends not on The Mundane spirit what can fitly drive It into action In heaven it doth live So full of one great light it hath no time To such low trifles as past sights to dive Such as she gathered up in earthly slime Foreknowledge of herself is lost in light divine 35 But can she here forget our radiant Sunne Of which its maker is the bright idee This is her shadow or what she hath done Now she 's rewarded with the Deitie Suppose it Yet her lifes Centralitie So sprightly's quickned with near Union With God that now wish'd-for vitalitie Is so encreas'd that infinitely sh' has fun Herself her deep'st desire unspeakably hath wonne 36 And deep desire is the deepest act The most profound and centrall energie The very selfnesse of the soul which backt With piercing might she breaks out forth doth flie From dark contracting death and doth descrie Herself unto herself so thus unfold That actuall life she straightwayes saith is I. Thus while she were in this live bulk infold Of this low life as of herself oft tales she â—…old 37 In dangerous sicknesse often saith I die When nought doth die but the low plantall man That falls asleep and while Nature â—…oth tie The soul unto the body she nere can Avoid it but must feel the self-same pain The same decay if hereto she her mind Do bend When stupid cold her corse â—…reran She felt that cold but when death quite doth bind The sense then she herself doth dead and senselesse find 38 Or else at least just at the enterance Of death she feels that slie privation How now it spreads ore all so living sense Perceives how sleep creeps on till quite o'recome With drousinesse animadversion Doth cease but lower sense then fast ybound The soul bestoweth her adversion On something else So oft strange things hath found In sleep from this dull carcase while she was unbound 39 So though the soul the time she doth advert The bodies passions takes her self to die Yet death now finish'd she can well convert Herself to other thoughts And if the eye Of her adversion were fast sixt on high In midst of death 't were no more fear or pain Then 't was unto Elias to let flie His uselesse mantle to that Hebrew Swain While he
obay 5 Now sith my wandring Bark so far is gone And flitten forth upon the Occan main I thee beseech that just dominion Hast of the Sea and art true Sovereigne Of working phansie when it floats amain With full impregned billows and strong rage Enforceth way upon the boyling plain That thou wouldst steer my ship with wisdome sage That I with happy course may run my watery stage 6 My mind is mov'd dark Parables to sing Of Psyche's progeny that from her came When she was married to that great King Great Aeon who just title well may claim Of every soul and brand them with his name It s He that made us and not our own might But who alas this work can well proclaim We silly sheep cannot bleat out aright The manner how but that that giveth light is light 7 Then let us borrow from the glorious Sun A little light to illustrate this act Such as he is in his solstitiall noon When in the welkin there 's no cloudy tract For to make grosse his beams and light refract Then sweep by all those globes that by reflection His long small shafts do rudely beaten back And let his rayes have undenied projection And so we will pursue this mysteries retection 8 Now think upon that gay discoloured bow That part that is remotest from the light Doth duskish hew to the beholder show The nearer parts have colours far more bright And next the brightest is the subtle light Then colours seem but a distinct degree Of light now failing such let be the sight Of his far spreaden beams that shines on high â—…et vast discoloured orbs close his extremity 9 The last extreme the fardest off from light That 's natures deadly shadow Hyle's cell O horrid cave and womb of dredded Night Mother of witchcraft and the cursed spell Which nothing can avail 'gainst Israel No Magick can him hurt his portion Is not divided nature he doth dwell In light in holy love in union Not fast to this or that but free communion 10 Dependence of this All hence doth appear And severall degrees subordinate But phansie's so unfit such things to clear That oft it makes them seem more intricate And now Gods work it doth disterminate Too far from his own reach But he withall More inward is and far more intimate Then things are with themselves His ideall And centrall presence is in every atom-ball 11 Therefore those different hews through all extend So far as light Let light be every where And every where with light distinctly blend Those different colours which I nam'd whilere The extremities of that far shining sphere And that far shining sphere which centre was Of all those different colours and bright chear You must unfasten so o'respred it has Or rather deeply fill'd with centrall sand each place 12 Now sith that this withouten penetrance Of bodies may be done we clearly see As well as that pendent subordinance The nearly couching of each realtie And the Creatours close propinquitie To ev'ry creature This be understood Of differentiall profundity But for the overspreading latitude Why may 't not equally be stretch'd with th' Ocean floud 13 There Proteus wonnes and fleet Idothea Where the low'st step of that profunditie Is pight Next that is Psyche's out array It Tasis hight Physis is next degree There Psyche's feet impart a smaller fee Of gentle warmth Physis is the great womb From whence all things in th' Universitie Yclad in diverse forms do gaily bloom And after fade away as Psyche gives the doom 14 Next Physis is the tender Arachne There in her subtile loom doth Haphe sit But the last vest is changing Semele And next is Psyches self These garments fit Her sacred limbs full well and are so knit One part to other that the strongest sway Of sharpest axe them no'te asunder smite The seventh is Aeon with eternall ray The eighth Hattove steddy cube allpropping Adonai 15. Upon this universall Ogdoas Is founded every particularment From this same universall Diapase Each harmony is fram'd and sweet consent But that I swerve not farre from my intent This Ogdoas let be an unitie One mighty quickned orb of vast extent Throughly possest of lifes community And so those vests be seats of Gods vitality 16 Now deem this universall round alone And rayes no rayes but a first all-spread light And centrick all like one pellucid Sun A Sun that 's free not bound by natures might That where it lists exerts his rayes outright Both when it lists and what and eke how long And then retracts so as it thinketh meet These rayes be that particular creature-throng Their number none can tell but that all-making tongue 17 Now blundring Naturalist behold the spring Of thy deep-searching soul that fain would know Whether a mortall or immortall thing It be and whence at first it gan to flow And that which chiefest is where it must go Some fixt necessity thou fain wouldst find But no necessity where there 's no law But the good pleasure of an unty'd mind Therefore thy God seek out and leave nature behind 18 He kills He makes alive the keys of hell And death he hath He can keep souls to wo When cruell hands of fate them hence expell Or He in Lethe's lake can drench them so That they no act of life or sense can show They march out at His word and they retreat March out with joy retreat with footing slow In gloomy shade benumm'd with pallid sweat And with their feeble wings their fainting breasts they beat 19 But souls that of his own good life partake He loves as His own self dear as His eye They are to Him He 'll never them forsake When they shall dye then God Himself shall dye They live they live in blest eternity The wicked are not so but like the dirt Trampled by man and beast in grave they ly Filth and corruption is their rufull sort Themselves with death and worms in darknesse they disport 20 Their rotten relicks lurk close under ground With living wight no sense or sympathy They have at all nor hollow thundring sound Of roring winds that cold mortality Can wake ywrapt in sad fatality To horses hoof that beats his grassie dore He answers not The Moon in silency Doth passe by night and all bedew him o're With her cold humid rayes but he feels not heavens poâ—… 21 O dolefull lot of disobedience If God should souls thus drench in Lethe lake But O unspeakable torture of sense When sinfull souls do life and sense partake That those damn'd spirits may the anvils make Of their fell cruelty that lay such blowâ—… That very ruth doth make my heart to quake When I consider of the drery woes And tearing torment that each soul then undergoes 22 Hence the souls nature we may plainly see A beam it is of th' intellectuall sun A ray indeed of that eternity But such a ray as when it first out shone From a free light
it As wise or wiser then himself may But this is a main piece of idolatry and injustice in the world that every man would make his private Genius an universall God and would devour all mens apprehensions by his own fire that glowes so hot in him and as he thinks shines so clear As for this present song of the immortality of the soul it is not unlikely but that it will prove sung Montibus Sylvis to the waste Woods and solitary Mountains For all men are so full of their own phansies and idiopathyes that they scarce have the civility to interchange any words with a stranger If they do chance to heare his exotick tone they entertain it with laughter a passion very incident upon that occasion to children and clowns But it were much better neither to embosome nor reject any thing though strange till we were well acquainted with it Exquisite disquisition begets diffidence diffidence in knowledge humility humility good manners and meek conversation For mine own part I desire no man to take any thing I write upon trust vvithout canvasing and vvould be thought rather to propound then to assert vvhat I have here or elsevvhere vvritten But continually to have exprest my diffidence in the very tractates themselves had been languid and ridiculous It vvere a piece of injustice to expect of others that vvhich I could never indure to stoup to my self That knovvledge vvhich is built upon humane authority is no better then a Castle in the Aire For vvhat man is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or at least can be prov'd to us to be so Wherefore the foundation of that argument will but prove precarious that is so built And we have rather a sound of words signifiing the thing is so then any true understanding that the thing is so indeed What ever may seem strange in this Poem condemne it not till thou findest it dissonant to Plato's school or not deducible from it But there be many arguments that have no strangenesse at all to prove the soules immortality so that no man that is not utterly illiterate shall lose his labour in reading this short treatise I must confesse I intended to spin it out to a greater length but things of greater importance then curious theory take me off beside the hazard of speaking hard things to a multitude I make no question but those that are rightly acquainted with Platonisme will accept of that small pains and make a good construction of my poetry For I will assure thee Reader that it will be nothing but igorance of my scope that shall make any do othervvise I fly too high to take notice of lesser flaws If thou seest them I give thee free liberty to mend them But if thou regardest not lesser trifles we be well met Farewell H. M. THE ARGUMENT OF PSYCHATHANASIA Book 1. Cant. 1. Struck with strong sense of Gods good will The immortalitie Of souls I sing Praise with my quill Plato's Philosophie 1 VVHatever-man he be that dares to deem True Poets skill do spring of earthly race I must him tell that he doth misesteem Their strange estate and eke himself disgrace By his rude ignorance For there 's no place For forced labour or slow industry Of flagging wits in that high fiery chace So soon as of the Muse they quickned be At once they rise and lively sing like lark in skie 2 Like to a meteor whose materiall Is low unwieldy earth base unetuous slime Whose inward hidden parts ethereall Ly close upwrapt in that dull sluggish fime Ly fast asleep till at some fatall time Great Phoebus lamp has fir'd its inward spright And then even of it self on high doth climb That earst was dark becomes all eye all sight Bright starre that to the wise of future things gives light 3 Even so the weaker mind that languid lies Knit up in rags of dirt dark cold and blind So soon that purer flame of love unties Its clogging chains and doth its spright unbind It sores aloft for it it self doth find Well plum'd so rais'd upon its spreaden wing It softly playes and warbles in the wind And carols out its inward life and spring Of over-flowing joy and of pure love dothsing 4 It sings of purest love not that base passion That fouls the soul with filth of lawles lust And Circe-like its shape doth all misfashion But that bright slame that 's proper to the just And eats away all drosse and cankred rust With its refining heat unites the mind With Gods own spright who raiseth from the dust The slumb'ring soul and with his usage kind Makes't breath after that life that time hath not desin'd 5 So hath he rais'd my soul and so possest My inward spright with that unfeigned will He bears to Psyche's brood that I ne're rest But ruth or ragefull indignation fill My troubled veins that I my life near spill With sorrow and disdain for that foul lore That crept from dismall shades of night and quill Steep'd in sad Styx and fed with stinking gore Suckt from corrupted corse that God and men abhorrâ—… 6 Such is thy putid muse Lucretius That fain would teach that souls all mortall be The dusty Atoms of Democritus Certes have fall'n into thy feeble eye And thee bereft of perspicacity Others through the strong steem of their dull bloud Without the help of that philosophy Have with more ease the truth not understood And the same thing conclude in some sad drooping mood 7 But most of all my soul doth them refuse That have extinguish'd natures awfull light By evil custome and unkind abuse Of Gods young tender work that in their spright He first gins frame But they with heddy might Of over-whelming liquour that life drownd And reasons eye swell up or put out quite Hence horrid darknesse doth their souls confound And foul blasphemous belch from their furd mouth resounds 8 Thus while false way they take to large their spirit By vaster cups of Bacchus they get fire Without true light and ' cording to demerit Infernall blasts blind confidence inspire Bold heat to uncouth thoughts is their bad hire Which they then dearly hug and ween their feet Have clombe whither vulgar men dare not aspire But it s the fruit of their burnt sootie spright Thus dream they of drad death and an eternall night 9 Now in the covert of dame Natures cell They think they 'r shrowded and the mysterie Of her deep secrets they can wisely spell And ' pprove that art above true pretie Laugh at religion as a mockerie A thing found out to aw the simpler sort But they brave sparks have broke from this dark tie The light of nature yields more sure comfort Alas too many souls in this fond thought consort 10 Like men new made contriv'd into a cave That ner'e saw light but in that shadowing pit Some uncouth might them hoodwink hither drave Now with their backs to the dens mouth they sit Yet shoulder not all light
from the dern pit So much gets in as Optick art counts meet To shew the forms that hard without do flit With learned quaere each other here they greet True moving substances they deem each shadow slight 11 When fowls flie by and with their swapping wings Beat the inconstant aire and mournfull noise Stirre up with their continuall chastisings In the soft yielding penitent the voice These solemn sages nought at all accoyes 'T is common onely they philosophize Busying their brains in the mysterious toyes Of flittie motion warie well advize On'â—… inward principles the hid Entelechyes 12 And whereabout that inward life is seated That moves the living creature they espie Passing in their dim world So they 'r defeated Calling thin shadows true realitie And deeply doubt if corporalitie For so they term those visibles were stroy'd Whether that inward first vitalitie Could then subsist But they are ill accloy'd With cloddie earth and with blind duskishnesse annoy'd 13 If roaring lion or the neighing horse With frisking tail to brush off busie flies Approch their den then haply they discourse From what part of these creatures may arise Those greater sounds Together they advise And gravely do conclude that from the thing That we would term the tail those thund'ring neyes Do issue forth tail of that shadovving They see then moved most while he is whinneying 14 And so the lions huge and hideous roat They think proceeds from his rugg'd flowing mane Which the fierce winds do tosse and tousell sore Unlesse perhaps he stirre his bushie train For then the tail will carrie it again Thus upon each occasion their frail wit Bestirres it self to find out errours vain And uselesse theories in this dark pit Fond reasoning they have seldome or never hit 15 So soon new shadows enter in the cave New entelechias they then conceive Brought forth of nature when they passed have Their gloomy orb false shades eas'ly deceive Not onely they that visible bereave Of life and being but the hidden might And root of motion unliv'd unbeen'd they leave In their vain thoughts for they those shadows light Do deem sole prop and stay of th' hidden motive spright 16 This is that awfull cell where Naturalists Brood deep opinion as themselves conceit This errours den where in a magick mist Men hatch their own delusion and deceit And grasp vain shows Here their bold brains they beat And dig full deep as deep as Hyle's hell Unbare the root of life O searching wit But root of life in Hyles shade no'te dwell For God's the root of all as I elsewhere shall tell 17 This is the stupid state of drooping soul That loves the bodie and false forms admires Slave to base sense fierce 'gainst reasons controul That still it self with lower lust bemites That nought believeth and much lesse desires Things of that unseen world and inward life Nor unto height of purer truth aspires But cowardly declines the noble strife 'Gainst vice and ignorance so gets it no relief 18 From this default the lustfull Epicure Democrite or th' unthankfull Stagirite Most men preferre 'fore holy Pythagore Divinest Plato and grave Epictete But I am so inflam'd with the sweet sight And goodly beautie seen on Eloim-hill That maugre all mens clamours in despight I 'll praise my Platonissa with loud quill My strong intended voice all the wide world shall fill 19 O sacred Nymph begot of highest Jove Queen of Philosophie and virtuous lear That firest the nobler heart with spotlesse love And sadder minds with Nectar drops dost chear That oft bedrencht with sorrows while we 're here Exil'd from our dear home that heavenly soil Through wandring wayes thou safely dost us bear Into the land of truth from dirtie foil Thou keepst our slipping feet oft wearied with long toil 20 When I with other beauties thine compare O lovely maid all others I must scorn For why they all rude and deform'd appear Certes they be ill thew'd and baser born Yet thou alas of men art more forlorn For like will to its like but few can see Thy worth so night-birds flie the glorious morn Thou art a beam shot from the deitie And nearest art ally'd to Christianitie 21 But they be sprung of sturdie Giants race Ally'd to Night and the foul Earthie clay Love of the carcase Envie Spight Disgrace Centention Pride that unto th' highest doth bray Rash labour a Titanicall assay To pluck down wisdome from her radiant seat With mirie arms to bear her quite away But thy dear mother Thorough-cleansing virtue hight Here will true wisdome lodge here will the deigne to light 22 Come Gentle Virgin take me by the hand To yonder grove with speedie pace wee 'll hie It s not farre off from Alethea land Swift as the levin from the sneezing skie So swift wee 'll go before an envious eye Can reach us There I 'll purge out the strong steem Of prepossessing prejudice that I Perhaps may have contract in common stream And warie well wash out my old conceived dream 23 And when I 've breath'd awhile in that free aire And clear'd my self from tinctures took before Then deigne thou to thy novice to declare Thy secret skill and hid mysterious lore And I due thanks shall plenteously down poure But well I wote thou 'lt not envaffall me That law were rudenesse I may not adore Ought but the lasting spotlesse veritie Well thewed minds the mind doth alwayes setten free 24 Free to that inward awfull Majestie Hight Logos whom they term great son of God Who fram'd the world by his deep sciency The greater world Al 's makes his near abode In the lesse world so he can trace the trod Of that hid ancient path when as he made This stately Fabrick of the world so broad He plainly doth unfold his skilfull trade When he doth harmlesse hearts by his good spright invade 25 O thou eternall Spright cleave ope the sky And take thy flight into my feeble breast Enlarge my thoughts enlight my dimmer eye That wisely of that burthen closely prest In my straight mind I may be dispossest My Muse must sing of things of mickle weight The souls eternity is my great quest Do thou me guide that art the souls sure light Grant that I never erre but ever wend aright THE ARGUMENT OF PSYCHATHANASIA Book 1. Cant. 2. What a soul is here I define After I have compared All powers of life That stamp divine Show that brutes never shared 1 NOw I 'll addresse me to my mighty task So mighty task that makes my heart to shrink While I compute the labour it will ask And on my own frail weaknesse I gin think Like tender Lad that on the rivers brink That fain would wash him while the evening â—…een With sharper aire doth make his pores to wink Shakes all his body nips his naked skin At first makes some delay but after skippeth in 2 So I upon a wary due debate With my perplexed mind after perswade
the skie With silver starres in a due distance set Was cast about her somewhat carelesly And her bright flowing hair was not ylet By Arts device onely a chappelet Of chiefest flowers which from far and near The Nymphe in their pure lilly hands had set Upon her temples she did seemly wear Her own fair beams madd all her ornaments appear 13 What wilfull wight doth thus his kindly rest Forsake said she approching me unto What rage what sorrow boils thus in thy chest That thou thus spend'st the night in wasting wo Oft help he gets that his hid ill doth show Ay me said I my grief 's not all mine own For all mens griefs into my heart do flow Nor mens alone but every mourn full grone Of dying beast or what so else that grief hath shown 14 From fading plants my sorrows frshly spring And thou thy self that com'st to comfort me Wouldst strongst occasion of deep sorrow bring If thou wert subject to mortality But I no mortall wight thee deem to be Thy face thy voice immortall thee proclaim Do I not well to wail the vanity Of fading life and churlish fates to blame That with cold frozen death lifs chearfull motions tame 15 Thou dost not well said she to me again Thou hurt'st thy self and dost to them no good The sighs thou sendest out cannot regain Life to the dead thou canst not change the mood Of stedfast destiny That man is wood That weetingly hastes on the thing he hates Dull sorrow chokes the sprights congeals the blood The bodies fabrick quickly ruinates Yet foolish men do fondly blame the hasty fates 16 Come hasty fates said I come take away My weary life the fountain of my wo When that 's extinct or shrunk into cold clay Then well I wore that I shall undergo No longer pain O! why are you so slow Fond speech said she nor chang'd her countenance No signe of grief or anger she did show Full well she knew passions misgovernance Though her clear brest fond passion never yet did lance 17 But thus spake on sith friendly sympathy With all the creatures thus invades thy brest And strikes thine heart with so deep agony For their decay cording to that behest Which the pure sourse of sympathy hath prest On all that of those lovely streams have drunk I 'll tell thee that that needs must please thee best All life 's immortall though the outward trunk May changed be yet life to nothing never shrunk 18 With that she bad me rear my heavy eye Up toward heaven I rear'd them toward th' East Wherein a roscid cloud I did espy A Lunar rainbow in her painted vest The heavenly maid in the meanwhile surceast From further speech while I the bow did view But mine old malady was more increas'd The bow gan break and all the gawdy hew Dispeared that my heart the sight did inly rue 19 Thus life doth vanish as this bow is gone Said I That sacred Nymph forthwith reply'd Vain showes may vanish that have gayly shone To feeble sense but if the truth be try'd Life cannot perish or to nothing slide It is not life that falleth under sight None but vain flitting qualities are ey'd By wondring ignorance The vitall spright As surely doth remain as the Suns lasting light 20 This bow whose breaking struck thy troubled heart Of causelesse grief I hope shall thee recure When I have well explain'd with skilfull Art By its resemblance what things must indure What things decay and cannot standen sure The higher causes of that coloured Ark What e're becomes of it do sit secure That so the body failing lifes fair spark Is safe I 'll clearly show if you but list to mark 21 There be six Orders 'fore you do descend To this gay painted bow Sols centrall spright To the first place to th' next we must commend His hid spread form then his inherent light The fourth his rayes wherewith he is bedight The fifth that glistring circle of the Moon That goodly round full face all silver bright The sixth be beams that from her visage shone The seventh that gawdy bow that was so quickly gone 22 The fluid matter was that dewy cloud That faild as faithlesse Hyle wont to sail New guest being come the old she out doth croud But see how little Hyle did prevail Or sad destruction in this deemed bale Sols spright had form fair light and out-gone rayes The Moons round silver face withouten veil Do still remain her beams she still displayes The cloud but melt not lost the bow onely decayes 23 This number saits well with the Universe The number 's eight of the Orbs generall From whence things flow or wherein they converse The first we name Nature Monadicall The second hight Life Intellectuall Third Psychicall the fourth Imaginative Fifth Sensitive the sixth Spermaticall The seventh be fading forms Quantitative The eighth Hyle or Ananke perverse coactive 24 That last is nought but potentiality Which in the lower creature causeth strife Destruction by incompossibility In some as in the forms Quantitative All here depend on the Orb Unitive Which also hight Nature Monadicall As all those lights and colours did derive Themselves from lively Phoebus life centrall Nought therefore but vain sensibles we see caducall 25 And that the first Every-where-Unitie Is the true root of all the living creatures As they descend in each distinct degree That God's the sustentacle of all Natures And though those outward forms and gawdy features May quail like rainbowes in the roscid sky Or glistring Parelies or other meteors Yet the clear light doth not to nothing fly Those six degrees of life stand sure and never dy 26 So now we plainly see that the dark matter Is not that needfull prop to hold up life And though deaths engines this grosse bulk do shatter We have not lost our Orb conservative Of which we are a ray derivative The body sensible so garnished With outward forms these inward do relieve Keep up in fashion and fresh lively-hed But this grosse bulk those inward lives stands in no sted 27 Nor can one inward form another slay Though they may quell their present energy And make them close contract their yielding ray And hide themselves in their centreity Till some friendly appulse doth set them free And call them out again into broad day Hence lives gush not in superfluity Into this world but their due time do stay Though their strong centrall essence never can decay 28 In Earth in Aire in the vast flowing Plain In that high Region hight Aethereall In every place these Atom-lives remain Even those that cleeped are formâ—… seminall But souls of men by force imaginall Easly supply their place when so they list Appear in thickned Aire with shape externall Display their light and form in cloudy mist That much it doth amaze the musing Naturalist 29 Wherefore sith life so strongly sealed is Purge out fond thoughts out of thy weary mind And rather strive that
thou do nought amisse Then God to blame and Nature as unkind When nought in them we blamable can find When groaning ghosts of beasts or men depart Their tender mother doth but them uâ—…ind From grosser setters and more to â—…some smart Bless'd is the man that hath true knowledge of her Art 30 And more for to confirm this mystery She vanish'd in my presence into Aire She spread her self with the thin liquid sky But I thereat fell not into despair Of her return nor wail'd her visage fair That so was gone For I was woâ—…en strong In this belief That nothing can empair The inward life or its hid effencâ—… wrong O the prevailing might of a sweet learned tongue 31 By this the Suns bright waggon gan ascend The Eastern hill and draw on chearfull day So I full fraught with joy do homeward wend And fed my self with that that Nymph did say And did so cunningly to me convey Resolving for to teach all willing men Lifes mystery and quite to chase away Mind-mudding mist sprung from low fulsome fen Praise my good will but pardon my weak faultring pen. THE ARGUMENT OF PSYCHATHANASIA Book 1. Cant. 4. That Hyle or first matter 's nought But potentialitie That God's the never-fading root Of all Vitalitie 1 VVHat I was wisely taught in that still Night That Hyle is the Potentialitie Of Gods dear Creatures I embrace as right And them nigh blame of deep idolatrie That give so much to that slight nullitie That they should make it root substantiall Of nimble life and that quick entitie That doth so strongly move things naturall That life from hence should spring that hither life should fall 2 That all that springs from hence should be resolv'd Into this mirksome sourse first matter hight This muddie myst'rie they no'to well unfold If it be onely a bare passive might With Gods and Natures goodly dowries dight Bringing hid Noughts into existencie Or sleeping Something 's into wide day-light Then Hyle's plainly potentialitie Which doth not straight inferre certain mortalitic 3 For the immortall Angels do consist Of outgone act and possibilitie Nor any other creature doth exist Releast from dreary deaths necessitie If it potentâ—…alnesse so certainly Ensuen must If substance actuall They will avoâ—…ch this first matter to be Fountain of forms and prop fiduciall Of all those lives and beings cleeped Naturall 4 Then may it prove the sphere spermaticall Or sensitive if they would yield it life Or that is next the orb Imaginall Or rather all these orbs withouten strife So mought we all conclude that their â—…elief And first existence from this sphere they drew And so our adversaries loath or lief Must needs confesse that all the lore was true Concerning life that that fair Nymph so clearly shew 5 And that particular lives that beyborn Into this world when their act doth dispear Do cease to be no more then the snails â—…orn That she shrinks in because she cannot bear The wanton boys rude touch or heavy chear Of stormiâ—… winds The secundarie light As suâ—…ely shineth in the heavens clear As do the first fair beams of Phoebus bright Lasting they are as they though not of so great might 6 So be the efsâ—…uxes of those six orders Unfading lives from fount of liveâ—…ihood Onely what next to strifefull Hyle borders Particular visibles deaths drearyâ—…ood Can seize upon They passe like sliding flood For when to this worlds dregs lives downward hie They stroy one th' other in fell cankred mood Beat back their rayes by strong antipathie Or some more broad-spread cause do choke their energie 7 But to go on to that common conceit Of the first matter What can substance do Poore naked substance megre drie dull slight Inert unactive that no might can show Of good or ill to either friend or soe All livelesse all formlesse She doth sustain And hath no strength that task to undergo Besides that work is needlesse all in vain Each centrall form its rayes with ease can well up-stayen 8 What holds the earth in the thin fluid aire Can matter void of fix'd soliditie But she like kindly nurse her forms doth chear What can be suck'd from her dark dugges drie Nor warmth nor moistnesse nor fast densitie Belong to her Therefore ill nurse I ween She 'll make that neither hath to satisfie Young-craving life nor firmnesse to susteen The burden that upon her arms should safely leen 9 Therefore an uselesse superfluitie It is to make Hyle substantiall Onely let 's term 't the possibilitie Of all created beings Lives centrall Can frame themselves a right compositall While as they sitten soft in the sweet rayes Or vitall vest of the lives generall As those that out of the earths covert raise Themselves fairly provok'd by warmth of sunnie dayes 10 And thus all accidents will prove the beams Of inward forms their flowing energie And quantitie the extension of such streams That goes along even with each qualitie Thus have we div'd to the profunditie Of darkest matter and have found it nought But all this worlds bare Possibilitie Nought therefore ' gainst lifes durance can be brought From Hyles pit that quenchen may that pleasant thought THE ARGUMENT OF PSYCHATHANASIA Book 2. Cant. 1. Mans soul with beasts and plants I here Compare Tell my chief end His immortality's to clear Show whence grosse errours wend. 1 BUt hitherto I have with fluttering wings But lightly hover'd in the generall And taught the lasting durance of all springs Of hidden life That life hight seminall Doth issue forth from its deep root cent all One onely form entire and no'tâ—… advert What steals from it Beasts life Phantasticall Lets out more forms and eke themselves convert To view the various frie from their dark wombs exert 2 But mans vast soul the image of its Maker Like God that made it with its mighty sway And inward Fiat if he nould forsake heâ—… Can turn sad darknesse into lightsome day And the whole creature 'fore it self display Bid them come forth and stand before its sight They straight slush out and her drad voice obey Each shape each life doth leapen out full light And at her beck return into their usuall Night 3 Of God himself here listeth to appear Though not perforce yet of his own frank will Sheds his sweet life dispreads his beauty clear And like the Sunne this lesser world doth sill And like the Sunne doth the foul Python kill With his bright darts but cheareth each good spright This is the soul that I with presser quill Must now pursue and fall upon down-right Not to destroy but prove it of immortall might 4 Nor let blind Momus dare my Muse backbite As wanton or superfluously wise For what is past She is but justly quit With Lucrece who all souls doth mortalize Wherefore she did them all immortalize Besides in beasts and men th' affinitie Doth seem so great that without prejudice To many proofs for th' immortalitie Of humane
devest them both of time and place And of all individualities And matter doth of all her forms uncase Corporeall wight such subtile virtue never has 19 Now shall the indivisibilitie Of the souls virtues make an argument For certainly there 's no such qualitie Resideth in a body that 's extent For tell me is that qualitie strait pent Within a point of that corporeall Or is it with some spreaden part distent If in a point then longs it not at all To th'body in spread part then 't is extentionall 20 But that some virtue 's not extentionall May thus be proved Is there no science Of numbers Yes But what is principall And root of all have we intelligence Of Unities Or else what 's sprong from thence We could not know what doth the soul then frame Within her self Is that Idea extense Or indivisible If not we 'll blame The soul of falshood and continuall lying shame 21 Again if we suppose our intellect Corporeall then must we all things know By a swift touch what do we then detect The truth of bignesse when one point doth go Of our quick mind It need not be o'reslow For infinite parts be found in quantitie Or doth it use its latitude If so Remember that some things unspreaden be How shall it find them out Or if 't use both we 'll see 22 That both be unsufficient I prove A point cannot discern loosâ—… unity Freed from all site That latitude must move On all the body that it doth descry So must it be upstretch'd unto the skie And rubbe against the starres surround the sunne And her own parts to every part apply Then swiftly fridge about the pallid moon Thus both their quantities the mind hath strangely wonne 23 Adde unto these that the soul would take pains For its destruction while it doth aspire To reach at things that were her wofull gains That be not corporall but seated higher Above the bodyes sphere Thus should she tire Her self to ' stroy her self Again the mind Receives contrary forms The feverish fire Makes her cool brooks and shadowing groves to find Within her thoughts thus hot and cold in one she binds 24 Nor is she chang'd by the susception Of any forms For thus her self contraire Would be unto her self But Union She then possesseth when heat and cold are Together met They meet withouten jarre Within our souls Such forms they be not true You 'll say But of their truth lest you despair Each form in purer minds more perfect hew Obtains then those in matter we do daily view 25 For there they 're mixt soild and contaminate But truth doth clear unweave and simplifie Search sever pierce open and disgregate All ascititious cloggings then doth eye The naked essence and its property Or you must grant the soul cannot define Ought right in things or you must not deny These forms be true that in her self dâ—… shine These be her rule of truth these her unerring line 26 Bodies have no such properties Again See in one cluster many arguments Compris'd She multitudes can close constrain Into one nature Things that be fluent As flitting time by her be straight retent Unto one point she joyns future and past And makes them steddy stand as if present Things distant she can into one place cast Calls kinds immortall though their singulars do waste 27 Upon her self she strangely operates And from her self and by her self returns Into her self thus the soul circulates Do bodies so Her axle-tree it burns With heat of motion This low world she spurns Raiseth her self to catch infinity Unspeakable great numbers how she turns Within her mind like evening mist the eye Discerns whose muddy atomes 'fore the wind do fly 28 Stretcheth out time at both ends without end Makes place still higher swell often creates What God nere made nor doth at all intend To make free phantasms laughs at future fates Foresees her own condition she relates Th' all comprehension of eternity Complains she 's thirsty still in all estates That all she sees or has no'te satisfie Her hungry self nor fill her vast capacity 29 But I 'll break off My Muse her self forgot Her own great strength and her foes feeblenesse That she her name by her own pains may blot While she so many strokes heaps in excesse That fond grosse phansie quite for to suppresse Of the souls corporal'ty For men may think Her adversaries strength doth thus her presse To multitude of reasons makes her swink With weary toil and sweat out thus much forced ink 30 Or that she loves with trampling insultations To domineere in easie victory But let not men dare cast such accusations Against the blamelesse For no mastery Nor fruitlesse pomp nor any verity Of that opinion that she here destroyes Made her so large No 't is her jealousie 'Gainst witching falshood that weak souls annoyes And oft doth choke those chearing hoâ—…es of lasting joyes THE ARGUMENT OF PSYCHATHANASIA Book 3. Cant. 1. The souls free independency It s drery dreadfull state In hell Its tricentreity What brings to heavens gate 1 WEll said that man whatever man that was That said What things we would we straight believe Upon each slight report to have come to passe But better he that said Slow faith we give To things we long for most Hope and fear rive Distracted minds as when nigh equall weights Cast on the trembling scales each â—…ug and strive To pull the other up But the same sleights By turns do urge them both in their descents and heights 2 Thus waves the mind in things of greatest weight For things we value most are companied With fear as well as hope these stifly fight The stronger hope the stronger fear is fed One mother both and the like livelyhead One object both from whence they both do spring The greater she the greater these she bred The greater these the greater wavering And longer time to end their sturdy struggeling 3 But is there any thing of more import Then the souls immortality Hence fear And hope we striving feel with strong effort Against each other That nor reason clear Nor sacred Oracles can straight down bear That sturdy rascall with black phantasies Yclad and clouded with drad dismall chear But still new mists he casts before our eyes And now derides our prov'd incorporeities 4 And grinning saith That labour 's all in vain For though the soul were incorporeall Yet its existence to this bulk restrain They be so nearly link'd that if one fall The other fails The eare nor hears our call In stouping age nor eye can see ought clear Benumming palfies shake the bodies wall The soul hath lost its strength and cannot steer Its crasie corse but staggering on reels here and there 5 So plain it is that though the soul 's a spright Not corporall that it must needs depend Upon this body and must perish quite When her foundation falls But now attend And see what false conceits vain
sunne the moon the earth blew-glimmering hell Scorch'd Aetna's bowels each bulk you can divine To be in Nature every dern cell With fire-eyed dragons or what else therein doth dweil 23 These be all parts of the wide worlds excesse They be all seated in the Mundane spright And shew just as they are in their bignesse To her But circulation shews not right The magnitude of things for distant site Makes a deficience in these circulings But all things lie ope-right unto the sight Of heavens great eye their thin shot shadowings And lightned sides All this we find in Natures springs 24 The worlds great soul knows by Protopathie All what befalls this lower spright but we Can onely know 't by Deâ—…eropathie At least in sight and hearing She doth see In our own eyes by the close unitie Of ours and the worlds life our passion Plainly perceives our Idiopathie As we do hers by the same union But we cannot see hers in that perfection 25 Fresh varnish'd groves tall hills and gilded clouds Arching an eielid for the gloring morn Fair clustred buildings which our sight so crouds At distance with high spires to heaven yborn Vast plains with lowly cottages forlorn Rounded about with the low wayering skie Cragg'd vapours like to ragged rocks ytorn She views those prospects in our distant eye These and such like be the first centres mysterie 26 Or if you will the first low energie Of that one centre which the soul is hight Which knows this world by the close unitie Concorporation with the Mundane spright Unloos'd from this she wants a certain light Unlesse by true regeneration She be incorporate with God unite With his own spright so a new mansion Sh' has got oft sook with deepest suspiration 27 But robb'd of her first clothing by hard fate If she fall short of this wo's mel what pains She undergoes when this lost former state So kindled hath lifes thirst that still remains Thus her eternitie her nothing gains But hungry flames raging voracitie Feeding on its own self The heavens she stains With execrations and foul blasphemie Thus in foul discontent and smoth'ring fire they frie. 28 Vain man that striv'st to have all things at will What wilt thou do in this sterilitie Whom canst thou then command or what shall fill Thy gaping soul O depth of miserie Prepare thy self by deep humilitie Destroy that fretting fire while thou art here Forsake this worlds bewitching vanitie Nor death nor hell then shalt thou need to fear Kill and cast down thy self to heaven God shall thee rear 29 This middle centrall essence of the soul Is that which still survives asleep or waking The life she shed in this grosse earthly moul Is quite shrunk up lost in the bodies breaking Now with slight phantasms of her own fond making She 's clad so is her life drie and jejune But all flit souls be not in the same taking That state this lifes proportion doth tune So as thou livest here such measure must ensuen 30 But they whose souls deiform summitie Is waken'd in this life and so to God Are nearly joynd in a firm Unitie This outward bodie is but earthie clod Digested having life transfus'd abroad The worlds life and our lower vitalitie Unite in one their souls have their aboad In Christs own body are eternally One with our God by true and strong communitie 31 When we are clothed with this outward world Feel the soft aire behold the glorious Sunne All this we have from meat that 's daily hurld Into these mouthes But first of all we wunne This priviledge by our first union With this worlds body and diffused spright I' th' higher world there 's such communion Christ is the sunne that by his câ—…earing might Awakes our higher rayes to joyn with his pure light 32 And when he hath that life eliciâ—…ed He gives his own dear body and his bloud To drink and eat Thus dayly we are fed Unto eternall life Thus do we bud True heavenly plants suck in our lasting food From the first spring of life incorporate Into the higher world as erst I show'd Our lower rayes the soul to subjugate To this low world we fearlesse sit above all fate 33 Safely that kingdomes glory contemplate O'reflow with joy by a full sympathie With that worlds spright and blesse our own estate Praising the fount of all felicitie The lovely light of the blest Deitie Vain mortalls think on this and raise your mind Above the bodies life strike through the skie With piercing throbs and sighs that you may find His face Base fleshly fumes your drowsie eyes thus blind 34 So hath my Muse according to her skill Discovered the soul in all her rayes The lowest may occasionate much ill But is indifferent Who may dispraise Dame Natures work But yet you ought to raise Your selves to higher state Eternitie Is the souls rest and everlasting dayes Aspire to this and hope for victorie I further yet shall prove her immortalitie THE ARGUMENT OF PSYCHATHANASIA Book 3. Cant. 2. From many arguments we show The independencie Of humane souls That all lives flow From a free Deitie 1 THree apprehensions do my mind divide Concerning the souls preexistencie Before into this outward world she glide So hath my Mule with much uncertaintie Exprest herself so as her phantasie Strongly inacted guides her easie pen I nought obtrude with sowr anxietie But freely offer hints to wiser men The wise from rash assent in darksome things abstein 2 Or souls be well awake but hovering Not fixt to ought but by a Magick might Drawable here and there and so their wing Struck with the steem of this low Mundane spright May lower flag and take its stooping flight Into some plantall man new edified By its own plastick point Or else deep Night Drawn on by drooping phansie it doth slide Into this world and by its self that skill is tried 3 Makes to it self this fleshly habitation For this worlds spirit hath provok'd these rayes Then drown in sleep it works that efformation Of its own body all its parts displayes As doth the senselesse plant The two next wayes Are these A reall tricentreitie First centre ever wakes unmoved stayes Hight Intellect The next in sleep doth lie Till the last centre burst into this open skie 4 And then the middle wakes But the last way Makes but one centre which doth sleep likewise Till its low life hath reach'd this worlds glad day A fourth we 'll adde that we may all comprise Take quite away all preexistencies Of humane souls and grant they 're then first made When they begin this bodies edifice And actually this outward world invade None of these wayes do show that they must ever fade 5 The first way might be well occasioned By what we feel in the souls energies She works sometime as though she quite had fled All commerce with this bulks vitalities Yet falls she down at last and lowly lies In this base mansion is so
close contract That sleep doth seise her actualities Retains no memorie of that strange fact Nor of her self that soar'd in that high heavenly tract 6 The second way that makes the soul tricentrall The highest awake the other with sleep drownd May spring from hence None would vouchsafe the entrall Into this life if they were but once bound To that vast cintre where all things are found Hight Intellect The lowest is not awake Therefore the midst lies close in sleep upwound Three centres made that souls may quite forsake This baser world when union with the lowest they break 7 Again because this bodie 's fashioned Without our knowledge reason doth suggest That it could no wise be thus figured From our own centre and yet we not prest To any adversion Therefore we are drest With this grosse clothing by some plantall spright Centred in Nature So that glorious vest The Deiform intellect not by our own might Is made But we have rayes which each of these will fit 8 Ardent desire strong breathing after God At length may work us to that better place Body or clothing that high sure aboad That searching weather nor time can deface But to go on in our proposed race The third and fourth way have the same foundation Not multiplying beings to surpasse Their use What needs that numerous clos'd centration Like wastefull sand ytost with boisterous inundation 9 Let wiser clerks the truth dare to define I leave it loose for men to muse upon View at their leasure But yet this call mine Though we should grant the souls condition Before its deep incorporation Into dull matter to be nothing more But bare potentiality yet none Can prove from thence that it must fade therefore When to its earth this earth the trusty fates restore 10 For though she and her body be at once Yet of her bodie she doth not depend But it of her she doth its members branch Pierce bind digest and after makes it wend At her own will when she hath brought to end Her curious work and hath consolidate Its tender limbs which earst did feebly bend Through weaknesse then this world she contemplates And life still blazing higher seeks an heavenly state 11 Breaths after the first fountain of all life Her sweet creatour thither doth aspire Would see his face nor will she cease this strife Till he fulfill her thirsty fierce desire Nothing can quench this so deep rooted fire But his own presence So she gins despise This bodies pleasures ceaseth to admire Ought fair or comely to these outward eyes Or if she do from hence she higher doth arise 12 But can she higher rise then her own head Therefore her spring is God thence doth she pend Thence did she flow thither again she 's fled When she this life hath lost and made an end Of this low earthly course she doth ascend Unto her circles ancient Apogie Lifted aloft not again to descend Nor stoups nor sets that sunne but standeth free On never shaken pillars of Aeternity 13 But still this truth more clearly to evince Remember how all things are from one light It shall thy reason forceably convince That nought but God destroyes a centrall spright If he sucks in his beams eternall night Seiseth upon that life that it no'te flow In energie and hath no being quite But Gods own power He lets his breath out go The self-same things again so eas'ly doth he show 14 Let be noon day the welk in clear the moon I' th' nether world reflecting the sunnes rayes To cheer the irksome night Well! That being done Call out some wondrous might that listlesse stayes In slower phansies Bid't break all delayes Surround with solid dark opacity The utmost beams that Phoebus light displayes Softly steal on with equall distancy Till they have close clapt up all his explendency 15 All 's now in darknesse tell me what 's become Of that infinity of rayes that shone Were second centres from whence out did come Other faint beams what be they all quite flone All perish'd quite You stiflers now be gone Let fall that smoring mantle Do not straight All things return The nether world the moon The sunne enlightens us The self fame light Now shines that shone before this deep and dismall night 16 If not the same Then like to flowing stream You deem the light that passeth still away New parts ever succeeding The sunne-beam Hath no reflection then if it decay So fast as it comes forth Nor were there day For it would vanish 'fore it could arrive At us But in a moment Sol doth ray One end of his long shafts then we conceive At once both touch himself and down to us do dive 17 Beside this aire is not the sustentation Of spreaden light for then as it did move The light would move And sturdy conflictation Of struggling winds when they have fiercely strove Phoebus fair golden locks would rudely move Out of their place and eastern winds at morn Would make more glorious dayes while light is drove From that bright quarter southern blasts do burn From midday sun but yet northwinds like light have born 18 What then must be the channell of this river If we 'll have light to flow as passing stream So plain it is that Nature doth dissever The light and th' aire that those bright sunny beams Be not upheld by it as the warm gleems Or heat that lodgeth there From this firm might Nought leaning on the aire well may we 'r deem Some subtile body or some grosser spright Depending of fair Phoebus of no other wight 19 And when these rayes were forced to retire Into their fountain they were not so gone But that the same sprong out from their first fire So fine spunne glittering silk crumpled in one Changeth not ' â—…s individuation From what it was when it was gaily spread In fluttering winds to th' admiration Of the beholder Thus is nought so dead But God can it restore to its old livelyhead 20 For all the creature 's but the out gone-rayes Of a free sunne and what I meaned most Of him alone depend Hee deads their blaze By calling in his breath Though things be tost And strangely chang'd yet nought at all is lost Unlesse he list Nor then so lost but he Can them return In every thing compost Each part of th' essence its centreity Keeps to it self it shrinks not to a nullity 21 When that compounded nature is dissolv'd Each centre 's safe as safe as second light Or drove into the sunne or thence out-rol'd So all depend on th' Universall spright From hight to depth as they are ranked right In their due orders Lifes full pregnancy Breaks out when friendly sympathy doth smite The higher rank the higher enegie From natures lowly lap to Gods sublimity 22 But well may man be call'd the epitome Of all things Therefore no low life him made The highest holds all in his capacity Therefore mans soul from Gods
more Nigh to a flat fac'd figure and finds resistance sore 48 But now that all the heavens be liquid hence I 'll fetch an argument Those higher stars They may as well hang in fluid essence As do the Planets Venus orb debars Not Mars nor enters he with knock and jars The soft fine yielding Aether gives admission So gentle Venus to Marcurius dares Descend and finds an easie intromission Casts ope that azur curtain by a swift discission 49 That famous star nail'd down in Cassiopee How was it hammer'd in your solid sky What pinsers pull'd it out again that we No longer see it whither did it fly Astronomers say 't was at least as high As the eighth sphere It gave no parallax No more then those light lamps that there we spy But prejudic'd minds before themselves they 'll tax Of holy writ and the heavens they 'll make a nose of wax 50 What man will now that 's not vertiginous Hurrie about his head these severall lights So mighty vast with so voracious And rapid course whirling them day and night About the earth when the earths motion might Save that so monstrous labour with lesse pains Even infinitely lesse But thoughts empight Once in the mind do so possesse the brains That hard it is to wash out those deep ancient stains 51 Two things there be whose reason 's nothing clear Those cool continuall breathings of East wind Under the Line the next high Comets are In which three motions Philosophers do find Concerning which men hitherto are blind That have not mov'd the earth unto their aid Diurnall and an annuall course they have mind Like to the sunnes beside by what they 're sway'd To north or South This myst'ry's easly thus display'd 52 The Ecliptick course and that diurnall moving Is but apparent as the sunnes not true But that the earth doth move that still wants proving You 'll say Then if you will these Comets shew One proof for her two motions Whence issue Those Meteors turnings what shall hale them on And guide their steps that in proportion due They dance Sols measure what occasion Or fruit can be of that strange double motion 53 Nought but the earths circumvolution Doth cause this sight and but in outward show This sight of double Sunlike motion Seen in the Comets For the winds that blow Under the Aequinoctiall who doth know Any other cause that still they breathe from th' East That strange effect from whence else can it flow Then from the earths swift hurring from the West Mid partis strongliest rouz'd the Poles do sleep in rest 54 Wherefore men under th' Aequinoctiall Where the earths course most rapid is and swift Sensibly 're dash'd 'gainst that Aereall Pure liquid essence That clear aire is left Not snatch'd away so fast not quite bereft Of its own Nature nor like th' other skie Unmoved quite but slow pac'd is yclef And driven close together sensibly So feel we that fine aire that seems from East to flie 55 Those parts be in farre greater puritie Devoid of earthy vapours Thence it is They 're not so easly turn'd by sympathie The aire there having lesse of earthinesse So that they move not with one speedinesse The earth and it Yet curious men have fun Something like this even in the mid-land sea Ships foure times sooner the same stages run When westward they do slie then when they there begun 56 But that disgracement of Philosophie From flux and reflux of the Ocean main With its spread arms we by this Theorie Might take 't away and shew the causes plain Some parts of th' earth do much more swiftnesse gain When as their course goes whirling on one way With th' annuall motion which must needs constrain The sluid sea with unexpected sway Long time it were this mysterie fully to display 57 Wherefore I 'll let it passe my self betake Unto some reasons Astronomicall To which if 't please the nimble mind t' awake And shake off prejudice that wont forestall The ablest wit I fear not but he 'll fall Into the same opinion magnifie That subtile spirit that hath made this All And hath half-hid his work from mortall eye To sport and play with souls in sweet philosophie 58 But with crabb'd mind wisdome will nere consort Make its abode with a sowr ingenie That harmlesse spright it self will nere disport With bloudie zeal currish malignitie With wrathfull ignorance grave hypocrisie Mirth and free mindednesse simplicitie Patience Discreetnesse and benignitie Faithfulnesse heart-struck teneritie These be the lovely play-mates of pure veritie 59 The Eternall Sonne of God who Logos hight Made all things in a fit proportion Wherefore I wote no man that judgeth right In heaven will make such a confusion That courses of unlike extension Infinitely unlike in like time shall be run By the flight starres Such vast distension Of place shews that their time is not all one Saturn his ring no'te finish as quick as the Moon 60 Yet if the Earth stand stupid and unmov'd This needs must come to passe For they go round In every twise twelve houres as is prov'd By dayly experience But it would confound The worlds right order if 't were surely found A reall motion Wherefore let it be In them but seeming but a reall round In th' earth it self The world so 's setten free From that untoward disproportionalitie 61 For so the courses of the erring Seven With their own orbs will fitly well agree Their Annuall periods in the liquid heaven They onely finish then which as they be Or lesse or greater so the time they flie In their own circlings hath its difference The moon a moneth Saturn years ten times three Those have the least and bigg'st circumference So all their times and orbs have mutuall reference 62 Next light 's the Planets dark opacitie Which long time hath been found in the low moon Hills valleys and such like asperitie Through optick glasses thence have plainly shone By the same trick it hath been clearly shown That Venus moon-like grows corniculate What time her face with flusher light is blown Some such like things others have contemplate In Mercurie about the Sunne both circulate 63 When Venus is the furthest off from us Then is she in her full When in her full She seemeth least which proves she's exterous Beyond the Sunne and further off doth roll But when her circling nearer down doth pull Then gins she swell and waxen bug with horn But loose her light parts clad with darknesse dull She shows to us She and Mercury ne're born Farre from the Sunne proves that about him both do turn 64 They both opake as also is the Moon That turns about the earth so turn those foure 'Bout Jupiter tend him as he doth run His annuall course Then Tellus so may scoure Th' Ethereall plain and have the self saine power To run her circuits in the liquid skie About the Sunne the mind that doth not lour Drooping in
carthie dregs will not denie Sith we so well have prov'd the starres opacitie 65 About the great the lesser lamps do dance The Medicean foure reel about Jove Two round old Saturn without Nominance Luna about the earth doth nimbly move Then all as it doth seemly well behove About the bigg'st of all great Phoebus hight With joy and jollitie needs round must rove Tickled with pleasure of his heat and light What tumbling tricks they play in his farre piercing sight 66 But my next argument could I't well expresse With Poets pen it hath so mighty force That an ingenious man 't would stoutly presse To give assent unto the Annuall course Of this our earth But prejudice the nurse Of ignorance stoppeth all free confession Al 's keeps the way that souls have not recourse To purer reason chok'd with that oppression This argument is drawn from the stars retrocession 67 Planets go back stand still and forward flie With unexpected swiftnesse What 's the cause That they thus stagger in the plain-pav'd skie Or stupid stand as if some dull repose Did numb their spirits and their sinews lose Here'gins the wheel-work of the Epicycle Thus patch they heaven more botch'dly then old cloths This prettie sport doth make my heart to tickle With laughter and mine eyes with merry tears to trickle 68 O daring phansie that dost thus compile The heavens from hasty thoughts such as fall next Warie Philosophers cannot but smile At such feat gear at thy rude rash context An heap of orbs disorderly perplext Thrust in on every hint of motion Must be the wondrous art of Nature next Here working under God Thus thus vain man Intitles alwayes God to his opinion 69 Thinks every thing is done as he conceives Would bind all men to his religion All the world else of freedome he bereaves He and his God must have Dominion The truth must have her propagation That is his thought which he hath made a God That furious hot inust impression Doth so disturb his veins that all abroad With rage he roves and all gainsayers down hath trod 32 But to return from whence my Muse hath flown All this disordred superfluitie Of Epicycles or what else is shown To salve the strange absurd enormitie Of staggering motions in the azure skie Both Epicycles and those turns enorm Would all prove nought if you would but let slie The earth in the Ecliptick line yborn As I could well describe in Mathematick form 71 So could I that 's another argument From this same principle most clearly prove In regresse and in progresse different Of the free Planets Why Saturn should rove With shorter startings give back lesse then Jove Jove lesse then Mars why Venus flincheth out More then Mercurius why Saturn doth move Ofter in those back jets then Jove doth shoot But Mercury more oft then Venus and Mars stout 72 And why the Sunne escap'd an Epicycle When as th' old prodigall Astronomie On the other six bestowed that needlesse cycle Why Saturn Jove and Mars be very nigh Unto the earth show bigger in our eye At eventide when they rise Acronycall Why farre remov'd with so vast distancie When they go down with setting Kronycall All these will plain appear from th' earths course Annuall 73 Many other reasons from those heavenly motions Might well be drawn but with exilitie Of subtile Mathematicks obscure notions A Poets pen so fitly no'te agree And curious men will judge't a vagrancy To start thus from my scope My pitched end Was for to prove the immortalitie Of humane souls But if you well attend My ship to the right port by this bow'd course did bend 74 For I have clearly show'd that stout resistence Of the pure soul against the Mundane spright And bulk whereof's the lower mans consistence How it doth quell by force of reason right Those grosse impressions which our outward sight Seald in our lower life From whence we see That we have proper independent might In our own mind behold our own Idee Which needs must prove the souls sure immortality THE ARGUMENT OF PSYCHATHANASIA Book 3. Cant. 4. Iustice true faith in the first good Our best perswasion Of blest eternity unmov'd Th' earths conflagration 1 IT doth me good to think what things will follow That well prov'd thesis in my former song How we in liquid heavens more swift then swallow Do sail on Tellus lap That doth among The other starres of right not rudely throng We have vvhat highest thoughts of man desire But highest thoughts of man are vain and vvrong In outvvard heaven vve burn vvith hellish fire Hate envy covetise revenge lust pride and ire 2 In the eighth sphere Andromeda from chains Is not releast fearfull Orion flyes The dreaded Scorpion Alas vvhat gains Then is't to live in the bright starrie skyes It no man can exeem from miseries All you that seek for true felicity Rend your ovvn hearts There God himself descryes Himself there dvvells his beauteous majesty There shines the sunne of righteousnesse in goodly glee 3 And you who boldly all Gods providence Confine to this small ball that Tell us hight And dream not of a mutuall influence And how that she may shine with beamsbright At a farre distance clad with Sols lent light As Venus and the Moon O you that make This earth Gods onely darling dear delight All th' other orbs merely for this orbs sake So swiftly for to runne with labour never slack 4 To dance attendance on their Princesse Earth In their quick circuits and with anger keen Would bite him that or serious or in mirth Doubts the prerogative of your great Queen Best use of that your Theory I ween In this that as your selves monopolize All the whole world so your selves back again You wholy give to God Who can devise A better way Mans soul to God this closely tyes 5 But if the earth doth thankfully reflect Both light and influence to other starres As well as they to it where 's the defect That sweet subordination it mars Gods love to us then not so plain appears For then the starres be mutually made One for another Each all the good then bears Of the Universe for 'ts single labour paid With the joint pains of all that in the heavens wade 6 Rare reason why then God would be too good What judgeth so but envy and vain pride And base contract self-love which that free floud Of bounty hath so confidently tied Unto it self alone Large hearts deride This pent hypocrisie Is he good to me That grace I would not ere should be deny'd Unto my fellow My felicity Is multiply'd when others I like happy see 7 But if the rolling starres with mutuall rayes Serve one another sweet fraternity And humble love with such like lore we 'll raise While we do see Gods great benignity Thus mutually reflected in the skie And these round-moving worlds communicate One with another by spread sympathie This all things friendly will concatenate But
let more hardy wits that truth determinate 8 It me behoves t' hold forward on my way Leaving this uncouth strange Philosophy In which my lightsome pen too long did play As rigid men in sad severity May deem but we right carelesse leave that free Unto their censure Now more weighty thought Doth sway our mind thinking how all doth flee Whatever we have painfully ytaught So little fruit remains of all my skill hath wraught 9 o th' emptinesse of vain Philosophy When thin-spunne reason and exile discourse Make the soul creep through a strait Theory Whither the blunter mind can never force It self yet oft alas the case is worse Of this so subtile wight when dangers deep Approch his life then his who learnings sourse Did never drink of nere his lips did steep In Plato's springs nor with low gown the dust did sweep 10 Certes such knowledge is a vanity And hath no strength t' abide a stormy stoure Such thin slight clothing will not keep us dry When the grim heavens all black and sadly soure With rage and tempest plenteously dovvn shovver Great floods of rain Dispread exility Of slyer reasons fails Some greater povver Found in a lively vigorous Unity with God must free the soul from this perplexity 11 Say now the dagger touch'd thy trembling breast Couldst thou recall the reasons I have shown To prove th' immortall state of men deceast Evolved reason cannot stand at one Stoutly to guard thy soul from passion They passe successively like sand i' th' glasse While thou look'st upon this the other's gone But there 's a plight of soul such virtue has Which reasons weak assistance strangely doth surpasse 12 The just and constant man a multitude Set upon mischief cannot him constrain To do amisse by all their uprores rude Not for a tyrants threat will he ere stain His inward honour The rough Adrian Tost with unquiet winds doth nothing move His steddy heart Much pleasure he doth gain To see the glory of his Master Jove When his drad darts with hurrying light through all do rove 13 If heaven and earth should rush with a great noise He fearlesse stands he knows whom he doth trust Is confident of his souls after joyes Though this vain bulk were grinded into dust Strange strength resideth in the soul that 's just It feels the power how 't commands the spright Of the low man vigorously finds it must Be independent of such feeble might Whose motions dare not 'pear before its awfull sight 14 But yet my Muse still take an higher flight Sing of Platonick Faith in the first Good That Faith that doth our souls to God unite So strongly tightly that the rapid floud Of this swift flux of things nor with foul mud Can stain nor strike us off from th' unity Wherein we stedfast stand unshak'd unmov'd Engrafted by a deep vitality The prop and stay of things is Gods benignity 15 Al 's is the rule of his Oeconomie No other cause the creature brought to light But the first Goods pregnant fecundity He to himself is perfect full delight He wanteth nought with his own beams bedight He glory has enough O blasphemy That envy gives to God or soure despight Harsh hearts that feigne in God a tyranny Under pretense t' encrease his sovereigne Majesty 16 When nothing can to Gods own self accrew Who 's infinitely happy sure the end Of this creation simply was to shew His flowing goodnesse which he doth out send Not for himself for nought can him amend But to his creature doth his good impart This infinite Good through all the world doth wend To fill with heavenly blisse each willing heart So the free Sunne doth ' light and ' liven every part 17 This is the measure of Gods providence The key of knowledge the first fair Idee The eye of truth the spring of living sense Whence sprout Gods secrets the sweet mystery Of lasting life eternall charity But you O bitter men and soure of spright Which brand Gods name with such foul infamy As though poore humane race he did or slight Or curiously view to do them some despight 18 And all to shew his mighty excellency His uncontrolled strength fond men areed Is 't not as great an act from misery To keep the feeble as his life to speed With fatall stroke The weak shak'd whisling reed Shows Boreas wondrous strong but ignorance And false conceit is the foul spirits meed Gods lovely life hath there no enterance Hence their fond thoughts for truth they vainly do advance 19 If God do all things simply at his pleasure Because he will and not because its good So that his actions shall have no set measure Is 't possible it should be understood What he intends I feel that he is lov'd Of my dear soul and know that I have born Much for his sake yet is it not hence prov'd That I shall live though I do sigh and mourn To find his face his creatures wish he 'll slight and scorn 02 When I breath out my utmost vitall breath And my dear spirit to my God commend Yet some foul feigne close lurking underneath My serious humble soul from me may rend So to the lower shades down we shall wend Though I in hearts simplicity expected A better doom sith I my steps did bend Toward the will of God and had detected Strong hope of lasting life but now I am rejected 21 Nor of well being nor subsistency Of our poore souls when they do hence depart Can any be assur'd if liberty We give to such odde thoughts that thus pervert The laws of God and rashly do assert That will rules God but Good rules not Gods will What ere from right love equity doth start For ought we know then God may act that ill Onely to show his might and his free mind fulfill 22 O belch of hell O horrid blasphemy That Heavens unblemish'd beauty thus dost stain And brand Gods nature with such infamy Can Wise Iust Good do ought that 's harsh or vain All what he doth is for the creatures gain Not seeking ought from us for his content What is a drop unto the Ocean main All he intends is our accomplishment His being is self-full self-joy'd self-excellent 23 He his fair beams through all has freely sent Purge but thy soul that thou mayst take them in With froward hypocrite he never went That finds pretexts to keep his darling sinne Through all the earth this spright takes pains to winne Unto it self such as be simply true And with malignant pride resist not him But strive to do what he for right doth shew So still a greater light he brings into their view 24 All lives in severall circumference Look up unto him and expect their food He opes his hand showrs down their sustinence So all things be yfild with their wish'd good All drink are satisfi'd from this free flood But circling life that yet unsettled is Grows straight as it is further still remov'd
From the first simple Good obtains lesse blisse Sustains sharp pains inflicted by just Nemesis 24 But why do I my soul loose and disperse With mouldring reason that like sand doth flow Life close united with that Good a verse Cannot declare nor its strange virtue show That 's it holds up the soul in all its wo That death nor hell nor any change doth fray Who walks in light knows whither he doth go Our God is light we children of the day God is our strength and hope what can us then dismay 25 Goodnesse it self will do to us this good That godly souls may dwell with him for aye Will God forsake what of himself 's belov'd What ever lives may shrink into cold clay Yet good mens souls death hests shall not obey Where there 's no incompossibility Of things Gods goodnesse needs must bear the sway You virtuous brood take 't for sure verity Your souls shalt not fall short of blest eternity 26 But yet bold men with much perplexity Will here object against this principle Heaping up reasons strange fecundity Of ignorance that goodly might to quell Of my last argument so fairly well Set down right strongly the unsettled spright To have confirmed at my last far-well But contraire forces they bring into sight And proudly do provoke me with that rout to sight 27 Whence was 't say they that God the creature made No sooner why did infinite delay Precede his work should God his goodnesse staid So long a time why did he not display From infinite years this out-created ray The mighty starres why not inhabited When God may souls proportion to their clay As well as to this earth why not dispred The world withouten bounds endlesse uncompassed 28 Poore souls why were they put into this cave Of misery if they can well exist Without the body Why will not God save All mankind His great wisdome if it list Could so contrive that they 'd at last desist From sinning fallen into some providence That sternly might rebuke them that have mist Their way and work in them true penitence Thus might they turn to God with double diligence 29 Why be not damned souls devoyd of sense If nothing can from wickednesse reclame Rather then fry in pain and vehemence Of searching agony or why not frame Another form so with new shape and name Again to turn to life One centrall spright Why may 't not many forms in it contain Which may be wak'd by some magnetick might Cording as is the matter upon which they light 30 For when two severall kinds by Venus knit Do cause a birth from both the soul doth take A tincture but if free it were transmit Uncloth'd with th' others seed then it would make One simple form for then they could not slake One th' others energie Why 's the world still Stark nought through malice or through blind mistake Why had the first-made-man such a loose will That his innumerous of-spring he should fouly spill 31 Why was not this unlucky world dissolv'd As soon as that unhappy Adam fell I itch till of this knot I be resolv'd So many myriads tumble down to hell Although partakers of Gods holy spell Beside 't is said they that do not partake Of Christian lore for ever they must dwell With cursed fiends and burn in brimstone lake Such drery drad designes do make my heart to quake 32 One of a multitude of myriads Shall not be sav'd but broyl in scorching wo Innumerous mischiefs then to mischiefs addes This worlds continuance if that be so Ill infinitely more then good doth grow So God would show much more benignity If he the ribs of heaven about would strow Powder the earth choke all vitality Call back the creature to its ancient nullity 33 But thou who ere thou art that thus dost strive With fierce assault my ground-work to subvert And boldly dost into Gods secrets drive Base fear my manly face no'te make m'avert In that odde question which thou first did stert I 'll plainly prove thine incapacity And force thy feeble feet back to revert That cannot climb so high a mystery I 'll show thee strang perplexed inconsistency 34 Why was this world from all infinity Not made saist thou why could it be so made Say I. For well observe the sequency If this out world continually hath wade Through a long long-spun time that never had Beginning then there as few circulings Have been in the quick Moon as Saturn sad And still more plainly this clear truth to sing As many years as dayes or flitting houres have been 35 For things that we conceive are infinite One th' other no'te surpasse in quantity So I have prov'd with clear convincing light This world could never from infinity Been made Certain deficiency Doth alwayes follow evolution Nought's infinite but tight eternity Close thrust into it self extension That 's infinite implyes a contradiction 36 So then for ought we know this world was made So soon as such a Nature could exist And though that it continue never fade Yet never will it be that that long twist Of time prove infinite though nere desist From running still But we may safely say Time past compar'd with this long future list Doth show as if the world but yesterday Were made and in due time Gods glory out may ray 37 Then this short night and ignorant dull ages Will quite be swallowed in oblivion And though this hope by many surly Sages Be now derided yet they 'll all be gone In a short time like Bats and Owls yflone At dayes approch This will hap certainly At this worlds shining conflagration Fayes Satyrs Goblins the night merrily May spend but ruddy Sol shall make them all to fly 38 The roring Lions and drad beasts of prey Rule in the dark with pittious cruelty But harmlesse Man is master of the day Which doth his work in pure simplicity God blesse his honest usefull industry But pride and covetize ambition Riot revenge self-love hypocrisie Contempt of goodnesse forc'd opinion These and such like do breed the worlds confusion 39 But whither am I gone The eagre mind Impatiently expects I should proceed Unto the next objection that defin'd Then thorough on His vote it must not speed Danger of plenteous speech is the sure meed And Cynthius pulls me by my tender care Such signes I will observe with wary heed Therefore my restlesse Muse at length forbear Thy silver sounded Lute hang up in silence here ΑÎΤΙΨΥΞΟΠΑÎÎΥΞΙΑ OR A Confutation of the sleep of the SOUL after death ΑÎΤΙΜΟÎΟΨΥΞΙΑ OR That all SOULS are not one A Paraphrase on Apollo's answer concerning Plotinus SOUL By H. M. Master of Arts and Fellow of Christs Colledge in Cambridge 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Plotin Ennead 3. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 John 11. CAMBRIDGE Printed by Roger Daniel Printer to the Universitie 1642. THE PREFACE TO THE READER TO preface much concerning these little after-pieces of Poetry I hold needlesse having
forward roll An horrid monster count in Philosophick school 32 The soul then works by it self and is self-liv'd Sith that it acts without an instrument Free energies from her own self deriv'd Flow round But to go on The eyes yblent Do blink even blind with objects vehement So that till they themselves do well recure Lesse matters they no'te see But rayes down sent From higher sourse the mind do maken pure Do clear do subtilise do fix do settle sure 33 That if so be she list to bend her will To lesser matters she would it perform More excellently with more art and skill Nor by long exercise her strength is worn Witnesse wise Socrates from morn to morn That stood as stiff as any trunck of tree What eye could bear in contemplation So long a fix'dnesse none so long could see It s watery tears would wail its frail infirmity 34 Nor feeble eld sure harbenger of death Doth hinder the free work of th' Intellect When th' eye growes dim and dark that it unneath Can see through age the mind then close collect Into it self such misteries doth detest By its far-piercing beams that youthfull heat Doth count them folly and with scorn neglect His ignorance concludes them but deceit He hears not that still voyce his pulse so loud doth beat 35 Lastly sense phansie though they be confin'd To certain objects which to severall Belong yet sure the Intellect or mind Apprehends all objects both corporeall As colours sounds and incorporeall As virtue wisdome and the higher spright Gods love and beauty intellectuall So that its plain that she is higher pight Then in all acts to pend on any earthly might 36 If will and appetite we list compare Like difference we easly there discover This pent contract yfraught with furious jar And fierce antipathy It boyleth over With fell revenge or if new chance to cover The former passion Suppose lust or fear Yet all are tumults but the will doth hover No whit enslav'd to what she findeth here But in a free suspense her self doth nimbly bear 37 Mild gentle calm quick large subtill serene These be her properties which do increase The more that vigour in the bodies vein Doth waste and waxen faint Desires decrease When age the Mundane spright doth more release From this strait mansion But the will doth flower And fairly spread near to our last decease Embraceth God with much more life and power Then ever it could do in its fresh vernall hower 38. Wherefore I think we safely may conclude That Will and Intellect do not rely Upon the body sith they are indew'd With such apparent contrariety Of qualities to sense and phantasie Which plainly on the body do depend So that departed souls free energie May well exert when they have made an end Of this vain life nor need to Lethe Lake descend The Argument of ANTIPSYCHOP ANNYCHIA Cant. 2. Bondage and freedom's here set out By an inverted Cone The self-formd soul may work without Incorporation 1 FOuntain of beings the vast deep abysse Of life and love and penetrating Will That breaks through narrow Night and so transmisse At last doth find it self What mortall skill Can reach this mysterie my trembling quill Much lesse may set it forth yet as I may I must attempt this task for to fulfill He guide my pen while I this work assay Who All through all himself doth infinitely display 2 My end 's loose largenesse and full libertie To finden out Most precious thing I ween When centrall life it s outgone energie Doth spreaden forth unsneep'd by foe-man keen And like unclouded Sunne doth freely shine This is right Libertie whose first Idee And measure is that holy root divine Of all free life hight Ahad Unitie In all things He at once is present totally 3 Each totall presence must be infinite So is he infinite infinitie Those infinites you must not disunite So is he one all-spreaden Unitie Nor must you so out-spread this Deitie But that infinitie so infinite Must be in every infinite so we Must multiplie this infinite single sight Above all apprehension of a mortall wit 4 What is not infinitely infinite It is not simply infinite and free For straitnesse if you do conceive aright Is the true daughter of deficiencie But sith there 's no defect in Unitie Or Ahad Ahad this first centre hight In Poetrie as yet to vulgar eye Unpublish'd him first freedome infinite We may well style And next is that eternall light 5 Sonne unto Ahad Aeon we him name In that same Poeme like his father free Even infinitely free I him proclaim Every where all at once And so is she Which Psyche hight for perfect Unitie Makes all those one So hitherto we have Unmeasurable freedome Semele Is next whom though fair fluttering forms embrave Yet motion and defect her libertie deprave 6 Imagination's not infinite Yet freer farre then sense and sense more free Then vegetation or spermatick spright Even absent things be seen by phantasie By sense things present at a distancie But that spermatick spright is close consin'd Within the compasse of a stupid tree Imprison'd quite in the hard rugged rind Yet there defective reduplication we find 7 Farre more defective then in phantasie Or sense yet freer is the plastick spright Then quantitie or single qualitie Like quantitie it self out stretched right Devoid of all reduplicative might If any such like qualities there were So dull so dead so all devoid of light As no communicative rayes to bear If there be such to Hyle they do verge most near 8 But Hyle's self is perfect penurie And infinite straitnesse Here we finden nought Nor can do ought If curiously we prie Into this mirksome corner quite distraught From our own life and being we have brought Our selves to nothing Or the sooth to sayen The subtilest soul herself hath never wrought Into so strait a place could nere constrain Herself to enter or that hagge to entertain 9 Lo here 's the figure of that mighty Cone From the strait Cuspis to the wide-spread Base Which is even all in comprehension What 's infinitely nothing here hath place What 's infinitely all things steddie stayes At the wide Basis of this Cone inverse Yet it s own essence doth it swiftly chace Oretakes at once so swiftly doth it pierce That motion here 's no motion 10 Suppose the Sunne so much to mend his pace That in a moment he did round the skie The nimble Night how swiftly would he chace About the earth so swift that scarce thine eye Could ought but light discern But let him hie So fast that swiftnesse hath grown infinite In a pure point of time so must he flie Around this ball and the vast shade of Night Quite swallow up ever steddie stand in open sight 11 For that which from its place is not away One point of time how can you say it moves Wherefore the Sunne doth alwayes steddie stay In our Meridian as this
reason proves And sith that in an instant round he roves The same doth hap in each Meridian line For in his instantaneous removes He in them all at once doth fairly shine Nor that large stretchen space his freenesse can confine 12 The Sunne himself at once stands â—…n each point Of his diurnall circle Thus we see That rest and motion cannot be disjoynt When motion 's swift even to infinitie Here contrarieties do well agree Eternall shade and everlasting light With one another here do well complie Instant returns of Night make one long Night Wherefore infinitie is freedome infinite 13 No hinderance to ought that doth arrive To this free camp of fair Elysium But nearer that to Hyle things do dive They are more pent and find much lesser room Thus sensuall souls do find their righteous doom Which Nemesis inflicts when they descend From heavenly thoughts that from above do come To lower life which wrath and grief attend And scorching lust that do the souls high honour blend 14 Wherefore the soul cut off from lowly sense By harmlesse fate far greater libertie Must gain for when it hath departed hence As all things else should it not backward hie From whence it came but such divinitie Is in our souls that nothing lesse then God Could send them forth as Plato's schools descrie Wherefore when they retreat a free abode They 'll find unlesse kept off by Nemesis just rod. 15 But if kept off from thence where is she then She dwells in her own self there doth reside Is her own world and more or lesse doth pen Her self as more or lesse she erst did side With sense and vice while here she did abide Steril defect and nere obtaind desire Create a cone whose Cusp is not more wide Then this worlds Cone Here close-contracted fire Doth vex doth burn doth scorch with searching heat ire 16 Nor easly can she here fall fast asleep To slake her anguish and tormenting pain What drisling mists may here her senses steep What foggie fumes benumb her moistned brain The flitten soul no sense doth then retain And sleep ariseth from a sympathie With these low sprights that in this bulk remain But when from these the soul is setten free What sleep may bind her from continuall energie 17 Here they 'll replie It is not a grosse sleep That binds the soul from operation But sith that death all phantasms clean doth wipe Out of the soul she no occasion Can have of Will or Intellection The corpse do rot the spirit wide is spread And with the Mundane life fallen into one So then the soul from these quite being fled Unmov'd of ought must lie sunk in deep drowsihead 18 Nought then she hath whereon to contemplate Her ancient phantasms melt and glide away Her spright suck'd back by all-devouring fate And spread abroad those forms must needs decay That were therein imprinted If they stay Yet sith the soul from them is disunite Into her knowledge they can never ray So wants she objects the mind to excite Wherefore asleep she lies wrapt in eternall Night 19 To which I answer though she corporate VVith no world yet by a just Nemesis Kept off from all yet she thus separate May oft be struck with potent rayes transmisse From divers worlds that with such mockeries Kindling an hungry fire and eagre will They do the wretched soul but Tantalize And with fierce choking flames and furie fill So vext that if she could in rage herself she 'd kill 20 If any doubt of this perplexitie And think so subtil thing can suffer nought What 's gnawing conscience from impietie By highest parts of humane soul ywrought For so our very soul with pain is fraught The body being in an easie plight Through all the senses when you have presly sought In none of them you 'll find this sting empight So may we deem this dart the soul it self to hit 21 Again when all the senses beybound In sluggish sloth the soul doth oft create So mighty pain so cruelly doth wound It self with tearing torture such a state Brings on herself that none could tolerate Which must be in herself for once return'd Unto her body new resuscitate From sleep remembring well how erst she mourn'd Marvels how all so soon to peace and ease is turn'd 22 Wherefore the soul it self receiveth pain From her own self withouten sympathie With something else whose miserie must constrain To deep compassion So if struck she be With secret ray or some strong energie Of any world or lives that there remain She 's kept awake Besides fecunditie Of her own nature surely doth contain Innate Idees This truth more fully I 'll explain 23 Strong forward bearing will or appetite A never wearied importunitie Is the first life of this deep centrall spright Thus thrusts she forth before her some Idee Whereby herself now actuall she doth see Her mighty Fiat doth command each form T' appear As did that ancient Majestie This world of old by his drad Word â—…Form And made the soul of man thus divine Deiform 24 Thus in a manner the humane soul creates The image of her will When from her centre Her pregnant mind she fairly explicates By actuall forms and so doth safely enter To knowledge of her self Flush light she sendeth forth and live Idees Those be the glasse whereby the soul doth paint her Sweet centrall love sends out such forms as please But centrall hate or fear foul shapes with evill ease 25 The manner of her life on earth may cause Diversity of those eruptions For will desire or custome do dispose The soul to such like figurations Propension brings imaginations Unto their birth And oft the soul le ts fly Such unexpected eructations That she her self cannot devisen why Unlesse she do ascribe it to her pregnancy 26 It is an argument of her forms innate Which blazen out perchance when none descry This light is lost sense doth so radiate With Mundane life till this poore carcase die As when a lamp that men do sitten by In some wide hall in a clear winter night Being blown out or wasted utterly Unwares they find a sly still silver light The moon the wall or pavement with mild raies hath dight 27 So when the oyl of this low life is spent Which like a burning lamp doth waste away Or if blown out by fate more violent The soul may find an unexpected ray Of light not from full faced Cynthia But her own fulnesse and quick pregnancy Unthought of life her Nature may display Unto her self not by forc'd industry But naturally it sprouts from her fecundity 28 Now sith adversion is a property So deeply essentiall to the rationall soul This light or life from her doth not so fly But she goes with it as it out doth roll All spirits that arround their raies extoll Possesse each point of their circumference Presentially Wherefore the soul so full Of life when it raies out with presse presence
Oretakes each outgone beam apprends it by advertence 29 Thus plainly we perceive the energie Of the departed soul if we could find Strong reason to confirm th' innate idee Essentiall forms created with the mind But things obscure no'te easly be defind Yet some few reasons I will venture at To show that God's so liberall and kind As when an humane soul he doth create To fill it with hid forms and deep idees innate 30 Well sang the wise Empedocles of old That earth by earth and sea by sea we see And heaven by heaven and fire more bright than gold By flaming fire so gentle love descry By love and hate by hate And all agree That like is known by like Hence they confesse That some externall species strikes the eye Like to its object in the self-same dresse But my first argument hence I 'll begin to presse 31 If like be known by like then must the mind Innate idolums in it self contain To judge the forms she doth imprinted find Upon occasions If she doth not ken These shapes that flow from distant objects then How can she know those objects a dead glasse That light and various forms do gaily stain Set out in open streets shapes as they passe As well may see Lutes heare each foaming diapase 32 But if she know those species outsent From distant objects tell me how she knows These species By some other You nere ment To answer so For straight the question goes Unto another and still forward flows Even to infinity Doth the object serve Its image to the mind for to disclose This answer hath as little sense or nerve Now reel you in a circle if you well observe 33 Wherefore no ascititious form alone Can make us see or hear but when this spright That is one with the Mundane's hit upon Sith all forms in our soul be counite And centrally lie there she doth beget Like shapes in her own self that energie By her own centrall self who forth it let Is view'd Her centrall omniformity Thus easly keepeth off needlesse infinity 34 For the quick soul by it self doth all things know And sith withouten apt similitude Nought's known upon her we must needs bestow Essentiall centrall forms that thus endew'd With universall likenesse ever transmew'd Into a representing energie Of this or that she may have each thing view'd By her own centrall self-vitality Which is her self-essentiall omniformity 35 If plantall souls in their own selves contain That vitall formative fecundity That they a tree with different colour stain And divers shapes smoothnesse asperity Straightnesse acutenesse and rotundity A golden yellow or a crimson red A varnish'd green with such like gallantry How dull then is the sensitive how dead If forms from its own centre it can never spread 36 Again an Universall notion What object ever did that form impresse Upon the soul What makes us venture on So rash a matter as ere to confesse Ought generally true when neverthelesse We cannot ever runne through all singulars Wherefore in our own souls we do possesse Free forms and immateriall characters Hence 't is the soul so boldly generall truth declares 37 What man that is not dull or mad would doubt Whether that truth for which Pythagoras When he by subtile studdy found it out Unto the Muses for their helping grace An Hecatomb did sacrifice may passe In all such figures wheresoever they be Yet all Rectangle Triangles none has Viewed as yet none all shall ever see Wherefore this free assent is from th' innate idee 38 Adde unto these incorporeity Apprehended by the soul when sense nere saw Ought incorporeall Wherefore must she From her own self such subtile idols draw Again this truth more clearly still to know Let 's turn again to our Geometry What body ever yet could figure show Perfectly perfect as rotundity Exactly round or blamelesse angularity 39 Yet doth the soul of such like forms discourse And finden fault at this deficiency And rightly term this better and that worse Wherefore the measure is our own idee Which th' humane soul in her own self doth see And sooth to sayeâ—… when ever she doth strive To find pure truth her own profundity She enters in her self doth deeply dive From thence attempts each essence rightly to descrive 40 Last argument which yet is not the least Wise Socrates dispute with Theaetete Concerning learning fitly doth suggest A midwifes sonne ycleeped Phenarete He calls himself Then makes a quaint conceit That he his mothers trade did exercise All witlesse his own self yet well did weet By his fit questions to make others wise A midwife that no'te bear anothers birth unties 41 Thus jestingly he flung out what was true That humane souls be swoln with pregnancy Of hidden knowledge if with usage due They were well handled they each verity Would bringen forth from their fecunditie Wise framed questions would facilitate This precious birth stirre up th' inward idee And make it streme with light from forms innate Thus may a skilfull man hid truth clicitate 42 What doth the teacher in his action But put slight hints into his scholars mind Which breed a solemn contemplation Whether such things be so but he doth find The truth himself But if truth be not sign'd In his own soul before and the right measure Of things propos'd in vain the youth doth wind Into himself and all that anxious leasure In answering proves uselesse without that hid treasure 43 Nor is his masters knowledge from him flit Into his scholars head for so his brain In time would be exhaust and void of wit So would the sory man but little gain Though richly paid Nor is 't more safe to sain As fire breeds fire art art doth generate The soul with Corporeity 't would stain Such qualities outwardly operate The soul within her acts there closely circulate 44 Wherefore the soul it self by her idee Which is her self doth every thing discover By her own Centrall omniformity Brings forth in her own self when ought doth move her Till mov'd a dark indifferency doth hover But fierce desire and a strong piercing will Makes her those hidden characters uncover Wherefore when death this lower life shall spill Or fear or love the soul with actuall forms shall fill THE ARGUMENT OF ANTIPSYCHOPANNYCHIA Cant. 3. Departed souls by living Night Suckt in for pinching wo No'te sleep or if with God unite For joyes with which they flow 1 MY hardest task is gone which was to prove That when the soul by death's cut off from all Yet she within her self might live and move Be her own world by life imaginall But sooth to sain 't seems not so naturall For though a starre part of the Mundane spright Shine out with rayes circumferentiall So long as with this world it is unite Yet what 't would do cut off so well we cannot weet 2 But sith our soul with God himself may meet â—…nacted by his life I cannot see
rode up to heaven in a bright fierie wain 40 Thus naved stoutly rescued the soul From centrall death or pure mortalitie And from the listlesse flouds of Lethe dull And from the swallow of drad Unitie And from an all-consuming Deitie What now remains but since we are so sure Of endlesse life that to true pietie We give our minds and make our conscience pure Lest living Night in bitter darknesse us inmure FINIS A Paraphrasticall Interpretation of the answer of Apollo when he was consulted by Amelius whither Plotinus soul went when he departed this life I Tune my strings to sing some sacred verse Of my dear friend in an immortall strein His mighty praise I loudly will reherse With hony-dewed words some golden vein The strucken chords right sweetly shall resound Come blessed Muses let 's with one joint noise With strong impulse and full harmonious sound Speak out his excellent worth Advance your voice As once you did for great Aeacides Wrapt with an heavenly rage in decent dance Mov'd at the measures of Meonides Go to you holy quire let 's all at once Begin and to the end hold up the song Into one heavenly harmonie conspire I Phoebus with my lovely locks yâ—…ong The midst of you shall sit and life inspire Divine Plotinus yet now more divine Then when thy noble soul so stoutly strove In that dark prison where strong chains confine Keep down the active mind it cannot move To what it loveth most Those fleshly bands Thou now hast loos'd broke from Necessitie From bodies storms and frothie working sands Of this low restlesse life now setten free Thy feet do safely stand upon a shore Which foaming waves beat not in swelling rage Nor angry seas do threat with fell uprore Well hast thou swommen out and left that stage Of wicked Actours that tumultuous rout Of ignorant men Now thy pure steps thou stay'st In that high path where Gods light shines about And perfect Right its beauteous beams displayes How oft when bitter wave of troubled flesh And whirl-pool-turnings of the lower spright Thou stoutly strov'st with heaven did thee refresh Held out a mark to guide thy wandring flight While thou in tumbling seas didst strongly toyl To reach the steddie Land struckst with thy arms The deafing surges that with rage do boyl Stear'd by that signe thou shunn'st those common harms How oft when rasher cast of thy souls eye Had thee misguided into crooked wayes Wast thou directed by the Deitie They held out to thee their bright lamping rayes Dispers'd the mistie darknesse safely set Thy feeble feet in the right path again Nor easie sleep so closely ere beset Thy eyelids nor did dimnesse ere so stain Thy radiant sight but thou such things didst see Even in that tumult that few can arrive Of all are named from philosophie To that high pitch or to such secrets dive But sith this body thy pure soul divine Hath left quite risen from her rotten grave Thou now among those heavenly wights dost shine Whose wonne this glorious lustre doth embrave There lovely friendship mild-smiling Cupid's there With lively looks and amorous suavitie Full of pure pleasure and fresh flowring cheer Ambrosian streams sprung from the Deitie Do frankly flow and soft love-kindling winds Do strike with a delicious sympathie Those tender spirits and sill up their minds With satisfying joy The puritie Of holy fire their heart doth then invade And sweet perswasion meek tranquillitie The gentle-breathing aire the heavens nought sad Do maken up this great felicitie Here Rhadamanthus and just Aeacus Here Minos wonnes with those that liv'd of yore I' th' golden age here Plato vigorous In holy virtue and fair Pythagore These been the goodly of spring of Great Jove And liven here and whoso fill'd the quire And sweet assembly of immortall Love Purging their spirits with refining fire These with the happie Angels live in blisse Full fraught with joy and lasting pure delight In friendly feasts and life-outfetching kisse But ah dear Plotin what smart did thy spright Indure before thou reach'st this high degree Of happinesse what agonies what pains Thou underwent'st to set thy soul so free From baser life It now in heaven remains Mongst the pure Angels O thrice-happy wight That now art got into the Land of Life Fast plac'd in view of that Eternall Light And fitt'st secure from the foul bodies strife But now you comely virgins make an end Break off this musick and deft seemly Round Leave off your dance For Plotin my dear friend Thus much I meant my golden harp should sound The interpretation of the more unusuall names or words that occurre in the foregoing Poems IF any man conceive I have done amisse in using such obscure words in my writings I answer That it is sometime fit for Poeticall pomp sake as in my Psychozoia Othersome time necessitie requires it Propter egestatem linguae rerum novitatem as Lucretius pleads for himself in like case Again there is that significancie in some of the barbarous words for the Greeks are Barbarians to us that although not out of superstition yet upon due reason I was easily drawn to follow the Counsel of the Chaldee Oracle 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Not to change those barbarous terms into our English tongue Lastly if I have offended in using such hard names or words I shall make amends now by interpreting them A AHad 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 One or The One. The Platonists call the first Originall of all things 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 for these reasons 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or One because the multitude or pluralitie of Beings is from this One as all numbers from an unite 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or The Good 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 because all things are driven drawn or make haste to partake of it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Procl Theolog. Plat. lib. 2. cap 4. Abinoam 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Pater amoenitatis Father of delight Autocalon 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The very beauty Arachnea hath its name from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a spider Adonai 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The Lord or the sustainer of all things from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Basis or foot of a pillar Autaestthesid 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Self sensednesse Adamah 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Earth The earthly or naturall 〈◊〉 abode Autophilus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a lover of himself Anthropion The same with Adamah Onely Adamah signifies earthlinesse Anthropion from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 uprightnesse of body or looking up Alopecopolis 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The foâ—…es citie or politie Autaparnes 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Simon Autaparnes and Hypomene are but the soul thrice told over Autaparnes is the soul denying it self Hypomone the soul bearing the anguish and agonie of this deniall of it self From these two results Simon the soul obedient to the
spirit of Christ. Now there is no self-deniall where there is no corrupt or evil life to be supprest and unsatisfied nor any Patience or Hypomone where there is no agonie from the vexation of self-deniall So that the soul so long as it is Autaparnes or Hypomone is a thing complex or concrete necessarily including the corruption of that evil life or spirit which is the souls self for a time Hence is that riddle easily opened How the strength of Autaparnes is the weakning of Simon and the destruction of him and Hypomone in the valley of Ain Simons consummation and perfection or rather his translation or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Anautaesthetus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 One that feels not himself or at least relisheth not himself Aelpon 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 not hoping or without hope Apterie 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 from a negative and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a wing It signifies the want of wings Apathie 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 To be without passion Autopathie 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 denotates â—…he being self-strucken to be sensible of what harms us rather then what is absolutely evil Ain Not to be To be nothing from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Non nihil 〈◊〉 nemo Anautaestthesie 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Without self-sensednesse or relishing ones self Aeon 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Eternitie Aether 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to burn The fluid fierâ—… nature of heaven the same that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which signifie as much viz. a fierie fluour or a fluid fire Aides 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 It ordinarily signifies Oâ—…cus or Pluto here the winter Sunne the etymon fits both 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Hell is dark and the Sunne in winter leaves us to long nights Apogee 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is that absis or ark of the circle of a Planet in which the Planet is further off from the earth as the word it self intimates Autocineticall 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 That which moves it self Africk Rock See Pompon Mel. lib. 1. cap. 8. Rom. 9. 33. 1. Cor. 10. 4. 1. Pet. 2. 5. Revel 5. 10. Psal. 105. 15. Ananke 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The same that Hyle is But the proper signification of the word is Necessitie See Hyle Alethea-land That is the land of truth 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as the Platonists call it Acronychall See Cronychall B BEirah or Beiron The brutish life from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 brutum Bacha Weeping Bacha vale is the valley of tears from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 flevit C CHaos In our blew Chaos that is In our corporeall spirit For that is the matter that the soul raiseth her phantasmaticall forms in as the life of the world doth bodily shapes in the heavens or aire Cronychall or Acronychall that is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 vespertine or at the beginning of night So a starre is said to rise or set Acronychall when it riseth or setteth at the sunne-setting For then is the beginning of night Clare Claros a citie of Ionia famous for Apollo's temple and answers amongst which was this which I have interpreted in Psychathanasia 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Macrob. Saturnal lib. 1. cap. 18. D DIzoia 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Double-livednesse Daemon any particular life any divided spirit or rather the power ruling in these This is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 â—…ivido Duessa division or dualitie Daemoniake That which is according to that divided life or particular spirit that rules for it self Dicaeosyne 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Justice or morall righteousnesse Diana the Moon by which is set out the dead light or letter of the law Deuteropathie 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is a being affected at second rebound as I may so say We see the Sunne not so properly by sympathie as deuteropathie As the mundane spirit is affected where the Sunne is so am I in some manner but not presently because it is so affected but because in my eye the Sunne is vigorously represented Otherwise a man might see the Sunne if he had but a body of thin aire E EIdos 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Form or Beautie Eloim or Eloah 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifie properly the strong God Entelechia 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 It is nothing else but forma or actus and belongs even to the most contemptible forms as for example to Motion which is defined by Arist in the third of his Physicks 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Scaliger in his 307 exercitation against Cardan descants very curiously upon this word Cùm igitur Formam dixeris that is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 intelliges immaterialitatem simplicitatem potestatem perfectionem informationem Hoc enim est 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 quod innuit maximus Poetarum Totósque infusa per artus Hoc est 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 quia est ultima forma sub coelestibus princeps inferiorum finis perfectio Hoc'est 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 posse This goodly mysterie and fit significancie seems plainly forced or fictitious if you compare it with what was cited out of Arist about Motion so that when we have made the best of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 it is but the form of any thing in an ordinary and usuall sense If we stood much upon words 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 would prove more significant of the nature of the soul even according to Scaligers own etymon from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 from its permeation and colligation or keeping together the bodie from defluxion into its ancient principles which properties be included in 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 moves forward the body thus kept together 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 intimates the possession or retention of the body thus mov'd that it is rather promov'd by the soul then amov'd from the soul. But of these words enough or rather too much Energie 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 It is the operation efflux or activity of any being as the light of the Sunne is the energie of the Sunne and every phantasm of the soul is the energie of the soul. Euphroâ—…a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The Night G GAbriel The strength of God from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 robustus fuit and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Deus H HYle Materia prima or that dark fluid potentiality of the Creature the straitnesse repugnancy and incapacity of the Creature as when its being this destroyes or debilitates the capability of being something else or after some other manner This is all that any wary Platonist will understand by 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in Plutarchs 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Hattove 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Good or that eminent Good or first Good from whence all good is derived See Ahad Haphe 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The touch Hypomone 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Patience See Autaparnes Har-Eloim 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The mount of Angels Genii or particular
Spirits Helios 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The Sunne Heterogeneall is that which consists of parts of a diverse nature or form as for example a mans body of flesh bones nerves c. Homogeneall That whose nature is of one kind I IDea-Lond The Intellectuall world Idothea The fleet passage of fading forms from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Forma and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 curro Ida. See Pompon Mel. lib. 1. cap. 17. Isosceles A triangle with two sides equall Idiopathie 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is ones proper peculiar 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 mine or thine being affected thus or so upon this or that occasion as 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is this or that mans proper temper But this property of affection may also belong unto kinds As an Elephant hath his idiopathy and a man his at the hearing of a pipe a cat and an Eagle at the sight of the Sunne a dogge and a Circopithecus at the sight of the Moon c. Iao. A corruption of the Tetragrammaton Greek writers have strangely mash'd this word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 some calling it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 others 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 some 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 It is very likely that from this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 came Bacchus his appellation 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and the Maenades acclamations 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in his Orgia Which sutes well with the Clarian Oracle which saith that in Autumne the Sun is called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which is the time of vintage 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 See Fullers Miscel. 2. Book L LOgos 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The appellation of the Sonne of God It is ordinarily translated the Word but hath an ample signification It signifieth Reason Proportion Form Essence any inward single thought or apprehension Is any thing but matter and matter is nothing Leontopolis 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The Lions city or Politie Lypon from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 sorrow M MOnocardia 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 single-heartednesse Myrmecopolis 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The City or Polity of Pismires Michael Who like unto God from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 similitudinis and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Deus Monad 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is unitas the principle of all numbers an emblem of the Deity And so the Pythagoreans call it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 God It is from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 because it is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 stable and immoveable a firm Cube of it self One time one time One remains still one See Ahad N NEurospast 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a Puppet or any Machina that's moved by an unseen string or nerve O ON 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The Beeing Ogdoas 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 numerus octonarius the number of â—…ight Onopolis 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The asses City or Politie P PSyche 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Soul or spirit Penia 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Want or poverty Physis 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Nature vegetative Proteus Vertumnus changeablenesse Psychania The land of Souls Philosomatus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 A lover of his body Psittacusa The land of Parots Pithecusa The land of Apes Pithecus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 an Ape Phobon from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Fear Phrenition Anger impatiency fury from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 phrensie or madnesse Ira furor brevis est Pantheothen 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 All from God Which is true in one sense false in another You 'll easly discern the sense in the place you find the word This passage of Panthcothen contains a very savory hearty reproof of all be they what they will that do make use of that intricate mystery of fate and infirmity safely to guard themselves from the due reprehensions and just expostulations of the earnest messengers of God who would rouse them out of this sleep of sin and stirre them up seriously to seek after the might and spirit of Christ that may work wonderfully in their souls to a glorious conquest and triumph against the devil death and corruption Pandemoniothen 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 All from the devil viz. all false perswasions and ill effects of them Panoply 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Armour for the whole body Pteroessa 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The land of winged souls from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a wing Perigee 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Is that absis or ark of a Planets circle in which it comes nearer the earth Psychicall Though 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 be a generall name and belongs to the souls of beasts and plants yet I understand by life Psychicall such centrall life as is capable of Aeon and Ahad Parelies 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 are rorid clouds which bear the image of the Sunne Psittaco Don Psittaco from Psittacus a Parot a bird that speaks significant words whose sense notwithstanding it self is ignorant of The dialogue betwixt this Parot and Mnemon sets out the vanity of all superficiall conceited Theologasters of what sect soever having but the surface and thin imagination of divinity but truly devoid of the spirit and in ward power of Christ the living well-spring of knowledge and virtue and yet do pride themselves in pratling and discoursing of the most hidden and abstruse mysteries of God and take all occasions to shew forth their goodly skill and wonderfull insight into holy truth when as they have indeed scarce licked the out-side of the glasse wherein it lies Plastick 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is that 〈◊〉 might in the seed that shapes the body in its growth Phantasme 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Any thing that the soul conceives in it self without any present externall object Parallax 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is the distance betwixt the true and seeming place of a starre proceeding from the sensible difference of the centre and the height of the superficies of the earth in reference to the starre and from the stars declining from the Zenith Protopathy 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 It is a suffering or being affected at first that is without circulation If any man strike me I feel immediately because my soul is united with this body that is struck and this is protopatâ—…y If the aire be struck aloof off I am sensible also of that but by circulation or propagation of that impression unto my eare and this is deuteropathy See Deuteropathy Periphere Peripheria it is the line that terminates a circle Q QUadiate A figure with foure equall sides and foure right angles The rightnesse of the â—…ngles is a plain embleme of erectnesse or uprightnesse of mind The number of the sides as also of the angles being pariter par that is equally divisible to the utmost unities 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as it is in Aristotle intimates equity or â—…ustice The sides are equall one with another and so are 〈◊〉 angles and the number of the sides and angles equall one with another Both the numbers
put together are a number pariter par again and constitute the first cube which is eight That addes steddinesse and perseverance in true justice and uprightnesse toward God and man Hypomone bears all this that is all that dolour and vexation that comes from the keeping our perverse heart to so strait and streight a rule R RHomboides is a parallelogrammicall figure with unequall sides and oblique angles S SPerm It signifies ordinarily seed I put it for the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the ratio seminalis or the invisible plasticall form that shapes every visible creature Solyma or Salem from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Peace Simon intimates obedience from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 obedivit Semele Imagination from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 imago Scalen a triangle with all sides unequall T TAsis 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 extension Tagathon 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The Good the same with Hattove U URanore The light or beauty of heaven from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 lux or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 pulchritudo Z ZEus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Jupiter from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ferveo or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 vivo THus have I briefly run through the more obscure terms in my Poems which I shall God willing hereafter if mens acceptance of these my first endeavours invite me to it and mine own occasions permit expound more sully and speak more determinately of those speculations which I now have but propos'd to mens more serious considerations to weigh freely and warily not so little a moment as the inconsiderable assent of the authour cast in to prejudice their judgements The drift of the whole book is this to stirre men up to take into their thoughts these two main points The heartie good will of God to mankind even in the life of this world made of the commixture of light and darknesse that he will through his power rescue those souls that are faithfull in this their triall and preferre the light before the dark that he will I say deliver them from the power of living Death and Hell by that strong arm of their salvation Jesus Christ the living God enthron'd in the heart of man to whom all the Geniâ—… of the Universe be they never so goodly and glorious shall serve They and all their curious devices and inventions shall be a spoil prey and a possession to Him that is most just and shall govern the nations in righteousnesse and equitie And that beside this happinesse on earth every holy soul hereafter shall enjoy a never-fading felicitie in the invisible and eternall Heaven the Intellectuall world Which if it be not true I must needs confesse it seems almost indifferent whether any creature be or no. For what is it to have lived suppose 70 years wherein we have been dead or worse above two third parts of them Sleep youth age and diseases with a number of poore and contemptible employments swallow up at least so great a portion That as good if not better is he that never was then he is that hath but such a glance or glimps of passing life to mock him And although the succession of â—…ighteousnesse upon earth may rightly seem a goodly great and full spread thing and a matter that may bear an ample correspondencie even to the larger thoughts of a good and upright man yet to say the truth no man is capable of any large inheritance whose life and existence is so scant that he shall not be able so much as to dream of the least happinesse once seised on by death But there are continually on earth such numbers of men alive that if they liv'd well it would be an heaven or Paradise But still a scant one to every particular man whose dayes are even as nothing So that the work of God seems not considerable in the making of this world if humane souls be extinguished when they go out of it You will say that those small particles of time that is thus scattered and lost among men in their successions aâ—…e comprehended and collected in God who is a continuall witnesse of all things But alas what doth the perpetuall repetition of the same life or deiform image throughout all ages adde to Him that is at once infinitely himself viz. good and happy So that there is nothing considerable in the creation if the rationall creature be mortall For neither is God at all profited by it nor man considerably And were not the Angels a great deal better employed in the beholding the worth of their Creatour then to diminish their own happinesse by attending those whom nothing can make happie looking on this troubled passing stream of the perishing generations of men to as little purpose almost as idle boyes do on dancing blebs and bubbles in the water What designe therefore can there be in God in the making of this world that will prove 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 worthy of so excellent a goodnesse and wisdome but the triall of the immortall spirit of man It seems the deepest reach of his counsel in the creation and the life of this world but a prelude to one of longer durance and larger circumference hereafter And surely it is nothing else but the heavy load of this bodie that keeps down our mind from the reaching to those so high hopes that I may not say from a certain sense and feeling of that clear and undisturbd state of immortalitie I will close all with the praise of those two main indowments of the mind viz. Charitie and Humilitie which certainly will make us meet eternall mansions for the ever-living Deitie But without these mans soul after this life becomes but a den of devils a dungeon of dark and restlesse phantasms being incorporate into the ever-gnawing and corroding spirit of Hell An hymne in the honour of those two despised virtues Charitie and Humilitie FArre have I clambred in my mind But nought so great as loveâ—… find Deep-searching wit mount moving might Are nought compar'd to that good spright Life of delight and soul of blisse Sure source of lasting happinesse Higher then Heaven lower then hell What is thy tent where maist thou dwell My mansion hight humilitie Heavens vastest capabilitie The further it doth downward tend The higher up it doth ascend If it go down to utmost nought It shall return with that it sought Lord stretch thy tent in my straâ—… breast Enlarge it downward that sure rest May there be pight for that pure fire Wherewith thou wontost to inspire All self-dead souls My life is gone Sad solitude is my irksome wonne Cut off from men and all this world In Lethes lonesome ditch I am hurld Nor might nor sight doth ought me move Nor do I care to be above O feeble rayes of mentall light That 〈◊〉 be seen in this dark night What are you what is any strength If it be not laid in one length With pride or love I nought desire But a new life or quite t' expire Could I demolish with mine eye Strong towers stop the fleet starres in skie Bring down to earth the pale-fac'd Moon Or turn black midnight to bright noon Though all things were put in my hand As parch'd as dry as th' Libyan sand Would be my life if Charity Were wanting But Humility Is more then my poore soul durst crave That lies intombd in lowly grave But if 't were lawfull up to send My voice to Heaven this should it rend Lord thrust me deeper into dust That thou â—…ayst raise me with the just 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 FINIS ERRATA Psychozoia P. 5. l. 16. reade ybrent p. 17. l. 36. rage full rise p. 19. l. 24. with all p. 39d 31. drearyhead p. 47. l. 7. counts Psychathanasia P. 1. l. 11. to spring p. 6. l. 36. do p. 17. l. 23. mov'd p. 27. l. 291. where in p. 63. l. 9. fell discontent p. 71. l. 9. divisibilitie p. 9. l. 22. lap that p. 100. l. 15. is Antipsychopannychia P. 5. l. 20 -ruption if p. 9. l. 23. detect Antimonopsychia P. 43. l. 30. His. * This opinion though it have its moments of reason yet every mans judgement is left free and will ever be where there is no demonstration to bind it to assent