and there cannot be a better gift than praise with expressions of thankfulness and with admiration of his longanimity and love of his preservation and providence of his power and greatness yet prayer should have a longer preparation than praise in regard by it we make our addresses immediatly to God in the second person and familiarly speaks to him as it were face to face whereas oblations of praise are commonly in the third person Therefore under favour I do not much approve of their custom who before and after meat when their brains are ful of worldly thoughts and tied to civil compliances do rush rashly into a speech with him in the second person having no time for a fitting praemeditation At such times a short ejaculation expressed in the third person though it be only mental if the case requiers may be more acceptable and freer from presumption than a long grace For among those innumerable sins which man is subject unto the sin in prayer though least thought upon is one of the greatest when without trembling precogitations God Almightie is spoken unto and thou'd in the Vocative case Now those Benedictions and strains of prayses which are utterd in the Nominative and other Cases have a larger scope of boldness and a greater latitude of notion they keep at a further distance and consequently require not so much reverence and recollection of the thoughts beforehand but may be extemporal 'T is one thing to say God be praisd another thing to say O God I praise thee the latter requires much more premeditation for one presupposeth he is as it were locally and presentially before him though the first may have as much of the heart be as effectual as the other This makes me to take some paines when I invoke God in the second person by my orison to obstract my self from all commerce with you for the present and elevat my self upon the wings of Faith in the sublimest posture I can towards Heven taking the choicest affections and ideas with me along where I figure to my self a huge mountain of most pure and inexpressible light wherein me thinks I discern a glorious majesty but the more I look upon him the more he dazles mine eyes that I cannot make him a fix'd object or discover any shape in him in regard of the refulgencie of his glory during this action I endeavour to mingle with that light for true love is nothing else but an appetit of Vnion and if I hold my self to be a spark or part of that light from the beginning and to be dart thence into that body of yours and made a soul may be no extravagant speculation Now touching this last Notion and the other concerning extemporall Prayer it is not utter'd to give the least occasion of scandal to any other soul but onely to intimat that there are for Acts of Devotion as well as for all things else fit places and times where there may be a greater opportunitie for one to summon his spirits to marshall his irregular thoughts and raise his affections towards that glorious object to whom Prayer is directed Bodie Dear soul my spirits are raised to an exceeding great height of comfort that in the first part of this last discours you are pleas'd with the method of my Devotions and carriage towards Heaven that I reserve my purest and most intense Affections for my Creator which I shall be most carefull ever to do dum spiritus hos regit artus He being my sole soverain good and truly I must tell you that when by my lubricities as by too free a genius in the fruition of a friend or otherwise I chance to have offended him I can never be friends with my self till I am reconcil'd to him and that I conceive his countenance to be turn'd again towards me yet I had once a long fit of dejection of Spirit that made me break out into these complaints which you may well remember for they were Emanations from you Early and late both night and day By moon-shine and the Sun's bright ray When spangling starrs emboss'd the skie And deck'd the World's vast canopy I sought the Lord of life light But oh my Lord kept out of sight As at all times so every place I made my Church to seek his face In Forrests Chaces Parks and Woods On Mountains Meadowes Fields and Flouds I sought the Lord of life and light But still my Lord kept out of sight On Neptun's back when I could see But few pitch'd planks 'twixt death and mee In freedom in bondage long With grones crys with Pray'r and song I sought the Lord of life light But still my Lord kept out of sight In chamber closet swoln with tears I sent up vowes for my arrears In Chappel Church and Sacrament The soul's Ambrosian nourishment I sought the Lord of life and light But still my Lord kept out of sight What! is mild Heven turn'd to brass That neither sigh nor sob can pass Is all commerce 'twixt earth and sky Cut off from Adam's Progeny That thus the Lord of life light Shold so so long keep out of sight Such Passions did my mind assail Such terrors did my spirits quail When lo a beam of Grace shot out Through the dark clowds of sin and doubt Which did such quickning sparkles dart That pierc'd the Centre of my heart O how my spirits come again How ev'ry cranny of my brain Was fill'd with heat and wonderment With joy and ravishing content When thus the Lord of life light Did re-appeer unto my sight Learn sinners hence 't is ne're too late To knock and cry at Hevens gate That Begger 's bless'd who doth not faint But re-inforceth still his plaint The longer that the Lord doth hide his face More brighter wil be his afterbeams of Grace Thus at last I made mythridat of that Viper which me thought had gnaw'd so long upon my Conscience which prompted me all the while of my dangerous condition and exhibited me my Quietus est at last Soul I like it very well that you make the Conscience your Guide and that you use to listen to his counsell for he is my Dictator may be said to have a coordinat Power with God himself Therefore it is the chiefest part of a wise Christian to take his Conscience for his Admonisher here least he become his Accuser hereafter He is Fraenum and Flagrum he is a bridle before but a Scourge after sin But I hope those turbid intervalls of grief and gripings bettered you afterward for confession and sorrow without amendment as one truely said is like the pumping of a Ship without stopping the leaks It is a pithy and ponderous advice that an ancient Father gives Commissa dole dolenda non committe repent of things committed and commit not things to be repented there is another saying that administreth both comfort and caution that if sins present do not delight thee
diseases The Third to wit the Rational not onely to all these but to vexation of spirit to corroding cares to griping thoughts to a perpetual clashing and combating of the humours insomuch that Man of all creatures is Heautontimorumenos a self-tormenter a persecutor and crucifier of himself all which are emanations from the Intellectual soul which besides useth to puzzle the brain with sturdie doubts and odd furrnises touching the mysteries of saving Faith whereas indeed as sense should vail to reason so reason should strike sail to faith moreover she is forward oftentimes to question the very works of Creation and quarrel with Nature the hand-maid of the Almighty in the method of her Productions as to make one instance for all the Philosopher was angry with Her because She did not make the stones of the river for bread as she did the water thereof for drink Soul 'T is true to answer the first part of your answer that it is my office to inform and actuat you which operations are emanations from me I am I confess being undivisible inextensive without parts and inorganical Tota in toto tota in qualibet parte I am diffused up down throughout that fabrick of flesh I am all in the whole and all in every part you have no movement at all without me but you yielding more obedience and being more plyable to the sensual appetit and the Will than to the dictates and directions of the Intellect my principal facultie have brought me to this pass whereas those eyes of yours should be as crystal casements through which I might behold the glorious firmament and studie my Creator in the Volumes of Nature you have made them to intromit and let out beams of vanity and lightness They are foyl'd so thick with earth that I can scarce discern Heaven through them Those ears of yours whereas they should let in holy Exhortations and wholsom Precepts you have used them as trunks to receive any idle discourses and vain sounds they have delighted more to hear Carrolls and Catches than Hymns and Anthems That mouth tongue and voice of yours whereas they were given you for Organs to sound out the glory of your Creator and sing Halelujahs unto Him you have made them Instruments of equivocation and profaness Those hands of yours whereas they were designed to be stretched forth to do deeds of Charitie and to pen Divine Meditations you have employed them to work your own revenges and to scribble idle frivilous fancies That throat of yours whereas it was created for a conduit-pipe to let out Pious Ejaculations you have made it the gullet of luxury and excess Those feet of yours whereas they were made you to walk in the paths of Pietie and Vertue and lead you to Gods holy House you have us'd them to run into the road of all licentiousness When I examine your heart the seat of your affections whereas you should have made it a Closet for your Creator to reside in and kept it sweet and cleanly for that purpose I find you have made it a cage of unclean birds of hatred hypocrisie choller and spirituall pride the fuliginous evaporation whereof hath fum'd up into your brain and infected all the cels thereof your Fantasie hath been extravagant and wild your Memorie hath been like a fierce that hath kept the chaff and let out the pure grain you have been more mindfull of bad than good turns your understanding hath been full of scepticisms your will hath clashed with Reason your Reason with Faith your Faith with Heaven In fine when I take you all in a lump I find you nought else but a bladder puffed up with ayrie passions and malignant humours amongst whom I am perpetually crucified as betwixt so many Iudases insomuch that I may justly say that you stand as a rotten wall twixt me and the beams of my Creator which would glance upon me with a stronger reverberation were it not for that foul bulk of matter that Cargazon of all sorts of infirmities which are stowed up in that sluggie and frail vessel Bodie A frail vessel indeed yet under favour you sit at the helm of it but I confess you cannot give me terms low and vile enough in comparison of your self who are of an infinitly more noble extraction the rational soul being Queen of forms and the bodie when she departs from it the gastliest and most noisom of things yet though you be a ray of Divinitie and I but a rag of mortalitie though you bear God Almighties image I but Adams though you be in me as a Diamond set in Horn though you be by a mysterious heavenly infusion and I by a seminarie traduction yet we have the same Creator as Ants and Angels have his hands have made me and fashioned me in the womb and the holy Text tells me that I am wonderfully made Nature his subordinate minister took much pains about me she used great deliberation in the business for the passed four several successive acts before I was compleated First there was a conjunction and cooperation of the sexes which among some require divers years before the work take effect as the present King of France was two and twentie years a getting and the last Prince of Conde thirteen moneths in the womb Secondly Then followed Conception which required a well tempered vessel to conserve the generative sperm by occlusion and constringement of the orifice of the Matrix which sperm being first bloud and afterwards cream was by a gentle ebullition coagulated into a cruddie lump which the womb by its natural heat made fit to receive form and to be organized whereupon Nature fell a working to delineate all the members and other parts beginning with those that are most noble as the heart the brain and the liver whereof the Galenists would have the liver to be first framed in regard it is the source and shop of bloud but the Peripatetiques held the heart to have the precedencie because it is the first thing that lives and the last that dies Thirdly Nature continued in this operation until a perfect shape was introduced which was the third Act and is called Formation being nought else but a production of an organical shapen bodie out of the spermatical substance caused by the plastick virtue and vigour of the vital spirits nor can I tell whether this Act was finished in thirtie fiftie fourtie two or fourtie five days after the Conception for the Naturalists allow such varietie of times according to the disposition of the matter before the Embrion be formed moreover they observe that Nature proceeds with those deliberate pawses that fourtie days after the Conception the creature is no bigger than a grain of wheat Fourthly This being done I was wrapped in three tunicles or membranes then I was animated with three souls the first with that of Plants called the vegetative soul then with a sensitive wherein I communicate with brute animals and lastly with
the rational soul was immitted The two first were generated ex Radice as the Philosophers term it viz. from the seeds of the Parents but the last which is your self was by immediate infusion from God himself though neither Naturallists nor Divines have yet positively determined when this Infusion is made Nor could ever any Anatomists by their curious dissections and inspections find yet any organ in the bodie or crannie and receptacle in the brain or any distinct place differing from other Animals where this rationall soul should reside in the Humane body Thus hath man an intellectuall soul he knows not where and infused he knows not how nor when so ignorant he is of the manner of his Creation This last Act is call'd Animation and as the Physicians allow Animation double the time that Formation had which sometimes happeneth in eight moneths sometimes in ten but most commonly in nine By these degrees and pauses was I made and casting off my secundine I came into the world to be a domicile not a dungeon for you to be a kind of ark to carry you to the port of Bliss to be a tabernacle for you nay to be a Temple for the Holy Ghost to dwell in Nor did Nature altogether play the Bungler in doing her work for she was pia Mater a Pious Mother in framing the cells of my brain and though she set me forth in no great volume yet by this slenderness gracilitie of constitution I have the advantage to carry less corruption about me for the more flesh the more corruption Now touching those fraylties you speak of whereunto I am subject you know they accompanied me to the world and that I derive them from the protoplast from the loins of my Gransire Adam the rust and canker of whose skin and sin stick unto me being moulded of the same matter Soul 'T is true that you are moulded of Earth as Adam was but the earth it self which gave him his composition and denomination did blush when she went to make him fore-seeing as it were his infirmities and propensity to all ill But I find by this reply of yours that you are well acquainted with your self by the account you give me of the method that Nature used in your Generation Now self-acquaintance is after the knowledge of the Creator the wisest it is one of the paths though a slabbie one that leads us to the high road towards heaven which is a rougher way than that you found ore the Alps and Pyrenean mountains The speculations whereof would make you truely value and vilifie your self it should prick those tumours and timpanies of pride that use to rise up in the humane creature when he contemplates how near that vessel wherein he slept so long in the bosom of his causes is to the excrementitious parts Now out of your discourse may be inferred that Man is that great Amphibion of Nature he passeth through the degrees of all creations He was first but meer Matter then he grew up to be a Vegetall afterwards a sensitive then a Human Creature in which condition he is capable of a regeneration and he is to be at last a Spirit good or bad Now you have two things that distinguish and specificat you from the first three the one is outward which is that erect upright Posture and shape you bear to behold Heaven your last and indeed your onely true Countrey this being but a transitory passage to that whereas your other fellow Cretures have their faces looking upon the earth The 2 is inward viz. the faculty of Reson which makes you a compensation for some inconveniences and weaknesses whereby you are inferior to other elementary Creatures By Reason man tames the Libian Lion he puts Castles upon the Elephants back makes the huge Camel to kneel and take up his burden by Reason he fetches the Eagle out of the Air and with his Harping-iron draggs up the great Leviathan out of the deeps by Reason he rules and curbs Nature her self making her pliable to his ends Now all the operations of Reason which are the best of human acts you derive from me But whereas you say that there can be no particular place found out either within you or without you more than there is in the Sensitive Creature where I should reside you must know that as the Solar Light displayeth it self throughout the whole Hemisphere yet it cannot be said to possess any place more than another so I being a beam of immortality am diffused through that little World of yours to quicken and heat all parts yet I confine my self to no peculiar cell and this inorganitie sheweth that I can live separat from you though you by no means without me as appears already by some functions that I exercise and those abstracted speculations that I use without the help or concurrence of matter and quantitie which are my instruments onely in ordine ad sensibilia not Intelligibilia yet I let you know that I have some closets in that Fabrick of yours more choice than others I am radically in the heart where the vital spirits have their residence where the arterial and most illustrious bloud doth run in the left ventricle But I am principally in the brain where the animal Spirits inhabit and whereon I cast my intellectual influences for Discourse and Reason which influences the brain of a brute animal is not capable of or adapted by Nature to receive Moreover the veins are branched up down the body the bloud is in the veins the spirits in the bloud and I am much in the spirits By this intimacie of communication I am polluted daily more and more I am infected hereby and leprified with sin and I fear me that as the wounds of my Saviour appeared upon his bodie after his Resurrection so those gashes and black spots which I have received from you will appear upon me after my separation And whereas you alledge that you are liable to future punishment as well as I for the aberrations and transgressions of this life I must tell you that when after my devorcement from you I become a spirit a simple substance and a sphere of my self the sharpness and activity the simpleness subtility of my pain being purely spiritual will be farr more grievous and cruciatory than any those gross members of yours can be capable of I shall endure all torments at once with certain knowledge of a succeeding perpetuity without any hopes of the least discontinuance or relaxation Furthermore whereas you say that I sit in the box to guide and govern that chariot of yours t is true I do so but as the divine Philosopher said that chariot of the body is led by two horses the one black the other white this last which are your good inclinations I can easily rule but the black one which are your turbulent wild passions and and obliquities I cannot govern so that I am afraid he is oftentimes so
in glory and consequently the creatures that are within them Now they who please themselfs in this fancy adhere to their opinion who think that every Star in heaven is peepled with som kind of creatures which God Almighty hath pleased to place there for his honour and service it standing not with his providence that the concavities of those vast bodies whereof some are computed to be many hundred of times bigger then the globe of the earth should be empty and void therefore these Theorists frame a kind of scale of of creatures they place the Elementary lowermost as the most gross The Selenites or Lunary peeple are of a finer composition then they and as one Star exceeds one another in height and glory the creatures that are coloniz'd within them do so accordingly but the most immateriall the purest and the most intellectuall are seated in the Sphere of the Sun where the Almighty hath setled his Throne and they are his nearest attendants The Elementary Creatures have more matter then form The Solar have more form then matter the Inhabitants of the Moon with other Astraean colonies are of a mix'd nature and the nearer they approach the body of the Sun who is the fountaine of light and heat and the glorious Eye of the world the more pure and spirituall they are Soul All this is but fancy which although somthing of illumination and sublimity may bee in it yet there is allo an extravagance in the Idea nor is it any way consonant to the orthodoxal Faith therfore never fear that by assumption of any other I shall ever quite abandon that body of yours but I shall reserve not only an aptitude but a willingness to have you for my tabernacle again and to bee recompact I shall be desirous to be a soul again till when I shall be only a Spirit but that bulk of yours shall be refin'd and sublimated to the perfection of Celestiall matter which is the purest and most quintescentiall part of the whole body of matter It is the Region wherein we shall go in equal pace with eternity it self therefore as man while he sojournes among the Elements bears a body sutable congruous and sympathetique to them so when he is exalted and made free Citizen of the Heavenly Jerusalem which is the true Country for which he had a being he shall be purified and adâ—pted to the temper of it wherein man shall not only return to his first state of perfection but to a far higher and greater exaltation of glory the {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} shall be no more {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} the Body shâ—ll be no more a Sepulcher which may be the Etymology of it here but it shall becom a perpetuall Temple for the Holy Ghost There his understanding shall not be subject to error nor his will to passion incertitudes and topiques shall be turn'd to de monstrations Faith to intuition provided that he prepare himself accordingly and in this School of nature make himself capable to remove thither provided that he make use of those means which his Creator hath prescrib'd him here and that he employ his thoughts words and actions to that end for man shall have degrees of happiness in Heaven according to his works though not for his works which makes me reflect upon a passage that happen'd in the reigne of Edilred one of our Saxon Kings who having chang'd his Crown for a Friers coule and his Court for a Cloyster went to visit a Favorit of his that had bin a licentious young man who telling the King that a vision had appear'd unto him the night before of two youths which hee had seen one at his beds head with a white book thinne written the other at his beds feet with a large black book blurr'd and very thick written The King answered that the meaning of this vision was that the little book contained all his good works the other his bad yet God was so infinitely mercifull that one good work would cover a multitude of bad ones for hee never desir'd or absolutely design'd any Creature of his for damnation c. Body Yet ther want not now adaies such busie and profane spirits who rushing into his secret Councels do affirm that he hath by his determinat will preordain'd such and such creatures will they nill they for perdition an opinion then which we cannot conceive worse of the Devill himself But my dear soul you solace me beyond imagination that you tell me I shall bee reunited unto you made fit to share of your future beatitude yet this under correction is a hard thing for humane capacity to apprehend that the very same entire body should bee found out and recompacted after such putrefactions after so many changes and revolutions where can all the splinters of a bone which a Cannon bullet hath shiver'd and shatter'd to pieces bee found again where can all the atomes which a corrasive hath eaten from our limbs bee found what cohaerence what rejoinder is ther ever like to bee between a leg lost in Turkey and an arm lost in India The Shark and other ravenous fish of the Sea the Tyger the Bear the Crocodile with other savage beasts of the land use to devoure to disgest and turn to chylus and so to blood the bodies of thousands of men and that blood goes to the generation of other such brute annimals the wormes do the like in the grave Burnt bodies are resolv'd into ashes those ashes are blown into the gutter that puddled water is carried by common-shores into rivers those rivers pay tribute to the vast Ocean which runs in and retreats by so many ebbings and flowings how can it enter into the brain of man that all the parts of these bodies can be retreev'd to make up the same Compositum again Soul I know that the most searching and sagacious wits that ever were were all at a loss when they meditated on this transcendent mystery nor can the common principles of philosophy herein be preserved by any strength of Reson for they are bones that Nature cannot disgest But as I told you before in the scanning of divine mysteries we must oftentimes inferr certainties out of impossibilities as also that God is omnipotent otherwise it were not just for him to require such beliefs at our hands Moreover to illustrat unto you a little this article of the Resurrection you must understand that as at the Creation ther was a separation of the Chaos that huge indigested lump which went to the making of all cretures so after the last fire hath reduc'd all to their first principles and calcin'd them to ashes ther shall be a separation of that confus'd mass of ashes by the same all powerfull hand ther shall be a kind of second creation and rallying of the individuall bodies which were formed at first and every soul shall enjoy her first consort though much more purified then it was
you and to partake with you of that knowledge and blissfullness which so far surpass all my senses and your Imagination I believe as yet Soul I do not say you shall rise but you shall be raised for solus Christus resurrexit alii suscitati Christ only did rise again by the power of his Godhead all others shall be raised that same body of yours shall be rais'd the same in substance not in quality for it will be made purer and freer from Corruption as I during the time of my separation on I shall not change my nature but my state I may be said to have no integrity but remain as a part of you till our reconjunction wherunto I shall still incline and propend because you were the instrument wherby I became first a soul which may be the cause that all the Saints in Heaven do so much long after the day of Judgement because they may bee reunited to their bodies and by that consortship have a fuller fruition of bliss Those eyes of yours shall then receive their reward for their liftings up to Heaven those hands of yours for being instruments of charity those eares of yours for their attention to holy duties those knees of yours for their bendings in Gods holy house that mouth of yours for receiving the blessed Sacrament in such humiliation that tongue heart and brain of yours for their praises and ejaculations and all other parts of yours that were the interpreters of your piety shall all then receive their reward in the Temple of Eternity Body But after your recesse and separation from me let it not bee esteem'd a too overbold curiosity if I desire to know whether you will give then a finall farewell to Earth and bee seen no more in the Elementary world because ther be so many stories told of spirits that walk to discover hidden tresures to detect murthers c. As also that they have appear'd in Churchyards and Charnell houses Soul Touching this speculation and doctrine of walking of Spirits it hath gravel'd the highest wits both in Divinity and Philosophy they are all put to a nonplus concerning the latter they would produce naturall reasons why in Cimitiers and other places they somtimes appeer and one is by the example of a vegetall body which being burnt and reduc'd into ashes the form of the same numericall plant by a curious Artist may be reviv'd visibly to the eye of the beholder and made to start up out of those ashes being shut uâ— in a glasse and heated in the botâ—tome in regard that the fixed faâ— though much of the volatil hatâ— flown away remaines there still so a humane body or cadaver beinâ— reduced to ashes in the grave bâ— the heat which the penetrating beams of the sun insuseth therinto the shape of the said body may be exhal'd up and made to appeer in the air Now touching the Theologues the common opinion is that it pleaseth God Almighty to give the Devil a priviledg and permit him to assume any shape that of man not excepted wherby he deludes and makes compacts with the weaker sort of peeple to destroy their souls for ther is no Creture that the Devil maligneth and hates more then mankind in regard he succeedes him in the beatitude that he lost which makes som Divines hold that when that number of Angels which fell and were tumbled down to Hell is filled up by humane souls the day of judgment will come But as I said before the ill spirit hath power by Gods permission to transform himself to sundry shapes and to transfer that power to his petty cacodaemons and imps to beguile and inveagle the simplest sort of mankind and most commonly women the weaker vessels who somtimes out of a desire of revenge and to wreck their malice somtimes for lucre and som petty supplies of money use to indent and make pactions with him though alwayes without a witness And hereof these times affoord more instances then ever any age did therefore whosoever denieth ther are such kind of actuall delusions and ill spirits sheweth that he himself as was said elswhere is possessed with the spirit of contradiction and obstinacy For ther are no nations new or old but have published laws against such who adoperat and make use of the devil for the ends afore mentioned as also for other curiosities and predictions 〈…〉 against them Ther are Edicts in France and Acts of Parlement in England against such who invoke ill spirits make any contracts with them wherof the very instrument and deed hath bin discover'd in divers places with the Devils claw for his signature together with the injunctions that he layed upon them before hand which in the Romish Countreys are that they must first renounce Christ and the extended woman meaning the blessed virgin they must contemn the Sacraments tread on the Cross spit at the Eucharist c. As I have noted els where Therefore without any controversy ther are airy spirits that hover up down perpetually about us But when I shall become a spirit which will be immediatly upon my dissolution from that body of yours I hope I shall appeer no more in this Elementary world till I attend my Saviour at the day of judgment to fetch you up also to Heaven as soon as we part from one another here you shall return to earth whence you first came and I to God that gave me you to your common Mother and I to the Father of lights whence as a beam of immortality I was sent to quicken organize and inform that body of yours and make it capable of heavenly beatitude in time being refin'd and fitted first for that purpose I thank my Saviour I have that within me which assures me hereof I am not left to such incertitudes anxietie that have any thing of despair in them such that an Italian Prince expressed when being upon his death bed and comforted by his friends touching the joyes of the other world whereunto he was going he fetch'd a deep grone said Oh I know what 's pass'd but I know not what 's to come much like another in the same condition who said Dubius vixi anxius morior quò vadam nescio I liv'd doubting I die anxious I know not whither I go To these may be added an odd speech of a French Baron not long since who meeting two capuchins going barefoot in cold frosty weather with their scrips upon their backs a begging knowing them to be gentlemen of a good family He said How grosly are these men cosen'd if ther be no Heaven That of Rablais was not so bad as this who being upon his death bed and the extreme unction applied unto him a friend of his who had come to visit him among other passages of consolation wish'd him good speed for he was upon his journey to a good Countrey viz. to heaven He answer'd so it seems that I am upon a journey for you see they are
lickering my boots already to that purpose but that which is father'd upon Paul the third is beyond all these when he said upon his death bed that shortly he should be resolved of two things whether ther be a God and Devil or whether ther were a Heaven and Hell Therefore Earth may be said to be worse then Hell in one respect because it bear's Atheists which Hell doth not but rather converts them in regard they feel God ther by his judgments and begin to have an historicall faith of him which here they had not Nor am I of that drowsie opinion to think that I shall sleep all the while among the common mass of souls in som receptacles ordain'd I know not where for that purpose till I be rejoyn'd unto you Nor doth the Religion I am of admit of any suburbs in hell as purgatory and other places where I must be purified some yeers before I ascend to heaven As Fray Iulian of Alcala doth averr upon record which is made authentique producing other spectators besides himself that he visibly saw the soul of Philip the second going up to Heaven in two ruddy clouds some two yeers after his death at such an hour of the night Body Let not my Soul bee offended if I bee curious to know somthing touching that most comfortable point of the immortality of the Soul and this curiosity doth not arise out of any doubt but a desire to be further confirm'd therein because there be some busie Spirits that stumble at it alledging that it is but a new tenet of Christian Faith not establish'd in the Church till the latter Lateran Councell and pumping out other quaeres and cavils concerning this Article Soul It is in Divinity as in Philosophy for as it was said long since that in this an impertinent Sceptic may blurt out a question which all the Sages of Greece were they alive could not answer So in Divinity an irresolute inconformable stubborn spirit may raise doubts that the whole Academy of Christian learning cannot solve such Pyrrhonians and perverse spirits have bin in all Ages ther are no principles can tie them their braines may bee said to bee like a skein of thrumb'd small threed any thing will entangle them and their thoughts like a bush of thornes that takes hold of any thing they are never satisfied either in points of faith or the operations of nature like him who would have found somthing to shear off upon an egge This may be cal'd one of the truest sorts of superstitions whose etymologie is super stare to stand too precisely and peremptorily upon a thing specially things indifferent and to bee over hot either in the abolition or maintenance of them to the destruction of whole Nations as also in recerches after supererogatory knowledg and interpretations of Scriptures wherby they would make the Holy Spirit speak what he never meant whereas the moderat and submiss sober minded he or she are the best proficients in the school of Divine knowledg But wheras you say that you desire to be strengthned and illuminated further touching the imateriality and consequently the incorruptibleness and immortality of the Rational Soul Let me tell you that not only Christian Divines but the best of Pagan writers both Poets Philosophers and Orators have done Her that right One calls Her Divinae particulam aurae Another sings Igneus est olli vigor coelestis imago Another Mens infusa Deo mortalis nescia sortis And Cicero among other hath a remarkable saying to this purpose si erro credendo Animam esse Immortalem libenter erro If I err in beleeving the soul to be immortall I willingly erre Moreover the Intellectuall humane soul doth prove Her self to be immortall both by her desires her apprehensions and operations Her desires are infinit and still longing after eternity now ther is no naturall passion given to any finit Creture to bee frustraneous Her apprehending of notions of Eternall truth which are her chiefest employment and most adaequat objects declare her immortall Al corruption comes from matter and from the clashing of contraries now when the soul is sever'd from the body she is beyond the sphere of matter therefore no causes of mortality can reach her ther is nothing in her that can tend to a not being Her operations also pronounce her immortall which she doth exercise without the ministery of corporeall organs for they are rather a clogg to Her she doth use to spiritualize materiall things in the understanding to abstract ideas from all Individuals she is an engin that can apprehend negations and privations she can frame collective notions all which conclude her immateriality and where no matter is found ther 's no corruption and wher ther is no corruptibleness ther must be an immortality now her prime operations being without any concurrence of matter she may be concluded immortall by that common principle Modus operandi sequitur modum essendi for in the world to come the state of the soul shall be a state of pure Being nor will ther be either action or passion in that state whence may be inferr'd she shall never perish in regard that all corruption comes from the action of another thing upon that which is corruptible therfore that thing must be capable of being made better or worse now if a separate soul be in her utmost final estate that she can be made neither it follows she can never lose the being she hath Moreover since the egress out of the body doth not alter her Nature but only her condition it must be granted that she was of the same nature while shee continued incorporated though in that imprisonment of hers she was subject to be forg'd as it were by the hammers of materiall objects beating upon her yet so as she was still of her self what she was Therfore when she goes out of the passible ore wherin she suffers by reason of the foulness and impurity of that ore she immediatly becomes impassible and a fix'd subject of her own nature that is a simple pure Being Both which states of the soul may be illustrated in som measure by what we find passeth in the coppelling of a fix'd mettall for as long as any lead or dross or any allay remains with it it continueth melting flowing and in motion under the muffle but as soon as they are parted from it and that it is become pure without mixture and single of it self it contracteth it self to a narrower room and at that instant ceaseth from all motion it grows hard permanent and resistent to all operations of the fire and admitteth no change or diminution in it 's subject by any extern violence so the Rational Soul when she departs from the drossy ore of the body and comes be her single self she becomes as it were exalted gold to be perfectly by her self she can never be liable any more to diminution to action passion or any kind of
the forfaiture of Heaven one dram of whose happinesse is more then the whole masse of all earthly contentments One drop of whose abstracted pure permanent and immarcessible delights is infinitely more sweet then all those mixt and muddy streames of corporeall and mundane pleasures then all those no other then Vtopian pleasures of this transitory world were they all cast into a liâ—beck and the very Elixir of them distill'd into one vessell Body Me thinks I feel that small triangle of flesh which beats towards the left side of my brest dilated with excess of joy to hear this discours touching your immortality being so infinitly happy that I have so precious a guest within me specially when I look upon the former discours you made touching the Resurrection and that I shall be also fitted to be reunited unto you in the Region of Eternity moreover these patheticall expressions of yours have fill'd me with thoughts of Mortification whereof I shall endeavour to shew som future symptomes A salad or posie gather'd in a Church-yard shall be more pleasing to me and that my shirt be dried ther hereafter rather then in a garden therefore I desire that you would joyn with the rest of the separated souls in Heaven that the time of my reunion with you may be hastned And so good morrow to my soul Vpon this the Nun vanish'd into me I know nor how and diffus'd Her self through all the cells of my brain and through the whole mass of blood among the spirits Now it is observ'd that it is the practice of Humane souls in time of sleep and the silent listning night to go oftentimes abroad and exercise their abstracted notions as also to try here as it was touch'd before how they can live separate hereafter by these noctivagations It is recorded of Iulius Casar that he dream't to have layn one night with his Mother and I may be said to have layn with my Soul By his mother was interpreted the Earth the common parent of all and it was presag'd of him by that Dream that he should be Conqueror of the world which prov'd true so I hope this dream may foretell that I shall conquer this little world of mine For both Divines and Philosophers make every Man a Microcosm or little world of himself And now 't was high time for me to awake which I did For lo the golden Orientall gate Sp. Of gray-fac'd Heaven 'gan to open fair And Phaebus like a Bridegroom to his mate Came dancing forth shaking his dewy hair And hurles his glitt'ring beams through gloomy Air So Rest to Motion Night to Day doth yeeld Silence to Noise the Stars do quit the Field My Cinque Ports all fly ope the Phantasie Gives way to outward objects Ear and Eye Resume their office so doth hand and lip I hear the Carrmans wheel the Coachmans whip The prentice with my sense his shop unlocks The milk maid seeks her pail porters their frocks All crys and sounds return except one thing I hear no bell for Mattins toll or ring Being thus awak'd and staring on the light Which silver'd all my face and sight I clos'd my Eyes again to recollect What I had dream't and make my thoughts reflect Vpon themselfs which here I do expose To every knowing soul And may all those Whose brains Apollo with his gentle ray Hath moulded of a more refined clay That read this Dream therby such profit reap As I did plesure Then they have it cheap Est sensibilium simia somnium I. H. FINIS The Ingredients whereof this Discours is compounded are 1. Divinity 2. Metaphysic 3. Philosophy 4. Poesie c. The principall points it handleth are The Faculties functions of the soul The generations and frailties of the Body The Influxes and operations of the stars The wayes of knowing God Almighty The Heavenly Hierarchies and their degrees The Resurrection Of walking Spirits of the old Philosophers Of the state of Souls after this life 〈◊〉 the joyes of Heven 〈◊〉 he torments of Hell 〈◊〉 sceptiques and Critiques 〈◊〉 Sundâ—y sorts of Christians throughout the world with many emergencies of new matter 〈◊〉 The prose goeth interwoven with sompeeces of poesie and History all along Sir K.D.