Selected quad for the lemma: spirit_n
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A51308
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Observations upon Anthroposophia theomagica, and Anima magica abscondita by Alazonomastix Philalethes.
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More, Henry, 1614-1687.
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1650
(1650)
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Wing M2667; ESTC R2776
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38,634
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104
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there is a descent into four c. This is but idle treading of the air and only a symptome of a light swimmering phansie that can have patience to write such hovering undeterminate stuffe as this that belongs either almost to any thing or nothing You even weary your Reader out Philalethes with such Metaphysicall dancings and airy fables Pag. 22. Lin. 5. This is a Labyrinth and wild of Magick where a world of Students have lost themselves And you Philalethes have not scaped scot-free For you have lost your reason before as I told you and your so much and so confidently conversing with meere Unities and Numbers which in themselves design nothing will teach you in time to speak words without any inward phantasm of what you say So that you shall bid fair for the loosing of your phansie too and then you will bee as you are near it already Vox praeterea nihil a mere noise and clatter of words Lin. 13. It moves here below in shades and tiffanies c. What a description is this of the Magicians fire I suppose you mean the Magicians Thais It moves in shades that is for the text is very dark and wants a Commentary in the Evening or Twilight Tiffanies is plain English but white etheriall vestures must be white Peticoats and white Aprons or else white Aprons upon Blew Peticoats and that shee is exposed to such a publick prostitution passing through all hands every one having the use of her body this Theomagicians fire seems to me to be no other then some very common strumpet But if you mean any thing but a Strumpet you have a wondrous infected phansie that dresses up your Theomagicall notions in such whorish attire But of a sodain my Theomagician has lest those more grosse and palpable expressions and now dances very high in the air quite out of the Ken of our eye like some Chymicall Spirit that has broke its Hermeticall prison and flown away out of the Artist's sight and reach being far more invisible and thin now then the finest Tiffany that ever took his sight and more arid and slight then the faintest shade I tell you once more Anthroposophus that Ternaries and Quaternaries and Decads and Monads and such like words of number have no usefull sense nor signification nor vertue if unapplyed to some determinate substance or thing But our great Theomagician having no project in this writing that I see but to amaze the world contents himself onely to rattle his chain and to astonish the rude and simple as if some Spirit or Conjurer was at hand and so those words that are most sonorous and consist of the greatest number of syllables please him better then what have more solid signification and a more setled and sober sense Pag. 24. Lin 17. Hee with the black Spaniell As for your ador'd Magus with the black Spaniell and that dark Disciple of Libanius Gallus what I have said to you already will serve here too But my controversie is with you onely Philalethes a sworn enemy of Reason and Aristotle and mee thinks you are very like your self still in the 27 Pag. Lin 22. I am certain the world will wonder I should make use of Scripture to establish Philosophy c. Here Philalethes you seem self-condemned even from your own speech being conscious to your self that all the world will bee against you in this superstitious abuse of the Scripture For are you wiser then all the world beside in this matter because you have pray'd away all your Logick in St. Augustines Letanie What profane boldnesse is this to distort that high Majesty of the holy Scripture to such poor and pitifull services as to decide the controversies of the World and of Nature As well becoming it is as to set pies and pasties into the oven with the sacred leaves of the bible This is but a fetch of imperious Melancholy and Hypocriticall superstition that under pretense of being more holy would prove more Tyrannicall and leave the understanding of man free in nothing at all but bring in a philosophy too Jure Divino And I can further demonstrate to you beside what I have intimated from the transcendency of the Scripture and high scope and aim thereof that the Scripture teacheth no secret or principle of Philosophy of which there is any doubt amongst men in their wits For either as where it seems to speak ex prefesso of any such things it do's it so obscurely that men rather father their own notions fetch'd from elsewhere upon the Scripture or else if it speak more plainly and literally yet it being allow'd by all sober men as well Jews as Christians as it is indeed undeniably evident from the passages themselves in Scripture that it speakes so ordinarily according to the rude and vulgar use and apprehension of men there can bee no deciding collections in matters of Philosophy safely gathered out of it Though I will not deny but that some Philosophick truths may have an happy and usefull illustration and countenance from passages in Scripture And their industry is not to be vilified that take any pains therein But I doe not beleeve that any man that has drove the proper use of the Scripture home to the most full and most genuine effect of it in himself but will be so wise and so discreet that hee will bee ashamed in good earnest to allow any such Philosophick abuse of But questionlesse the Scripture is the beginner nourisher and emprover of that life and light which is better then all the Philosophy in the world And he that stands in this light the firmer and fuller hee is possessed of it he is the more able to judge both of Nature Reason and Scripture it self But hee that will speak out of his own rash heat must needs run the hazard of talking at randum And this I make the bolder in charity to pronounce because I observe that the reverentiall abuse and religious mis-application of the holy Writ to matters of Philosophy for which it was not intended do's in many well-meaning men eat out the use of their reason for the exercise whereof Philosophy was intended And hence so much spurious and phantastick knowledge multiplies now adayes to the prejudice of mans understanding and to the intangling him in vain and groundlesse imaginations fortuitously sprung up from uncircumspect Melancholy dazled and stounded with the streamings and flashes of its own pertinacious phansie Which sometime is so powerfull as to over-master the Melancholist into a credulity that these flarings of false light in his dark Spirit are not from himself but from a Divine Principle the Holy Ghost And then bidding a dieu to Reason as having got some Principle above it measnres all truth meerly by the greatnesse and powerfulnesse of the Stroke of the Phantasme What ever fills the imagination fullest must bee the truest And thus a rabble of tumultuary and crasse representations must goe for so many Revelations and
it is no such mischief Anthroposophus to bee called fool The worst jest is when a man is so indeed And if you had but the skill to winnow away all the chaffe of humorous words and uncouth freaks and fetches of phansie and affected phrases which are neither the signes nor causes of any wisdom in a man all that will be left of this learned discourse of yours will prove such a small moity of that knowledge your presumptuous minde conceited to be in her self that you would then very sadly of your owne accord which would bee your first step to become wise indeed confesse your self a Fool And this I understand of your knowledge in Nature Now for that in Morality It is true you often take upon you the gravity to give precepts of life as especially in the 52 and 55 pages of this Tractate But you doe it so conceitedly with such chiming and clinching of words Antithetall Librations and Symphonicall rappings that to sober men you cannot but seem rather like some idle boy playing on a pair of Knick-knacks to please his own ear and phansie then a grave Moralist speaking wholesome words and giving weighty counsell of life and manners So that the best that you do is but to make the most solemn things ridiculous by your Apish handling of them I suppose because a Religious Humour has been held on in some Treatises with that skill and judgement or at least good successe that it has won the approbation and applause of most men an eager desire after fame has hurried you out upon the like attempt And though you would not call your Book Religio Magici as that other was Religio Medici yet the favourable conceit you had of your own Worth made you bold to vie with him and in imitation of that you have stuffed your Book here and there with a tuft of Poetry as a Gammon of Bacon with green hearbs to make it tast more savourly But all will not doe poor Magicus For now your designe is discovered you are as contemptible as any Juggler is before him that knows all his tricks aforehand And you run the same fortune that AEsops Asse who ineptly endeavouring to imitate the Courtship and winning carriage of his Masters fawning and leaping Spaniell in stead of favour found a club for his rude performance But you Magicus do not only paw ill-favouredly with your fore-feet but kick like mad with your hinder-seet as if you would dash out all the Aristoteleans brains And doe you think that they are all either so faint-hearted that they dare not or so singularly moralized that Socrates like if an Asse kick they will not kick again Yes certainly next to your self they are as like as any to play the Asses and to answer you kick for kick if you will but stand fair for them But you have got such a Magicall sleight of hiding of your head and nipping in your buttocks like the Hob-gobling that in the shape of an Horse dropt the children off one by one of his tail into the water that they cannot finde you out nor feel where about you would be else certainly they would set a mark upon your hinder parts For if I my dear Eugenius who am your brother Philalethes am forced out of care and judgement to handle you so seeming harshly and rigidly as I doe what doe you think would become of you st incideres in ipsas Belluas if you should fall amongst the irefull Aristoteleans themselves would you be able to escape alive out of their hands Wherefore good brother Philaletbes hereafter be more discreet and endeavour rather to be wise then to seem so and to quit your self from being a fool then to phansie the Aristoteleans to be such FINIS Vpon the Authors generous designe in his Observations of discovering and discountenancing all mysteriously masked non-sense and impostorous phansie the sworn Enemies of Sound-Reason and Truth NObly design'd let not a Sunday sute Make us my Gasser and my Lord salute Nor his Saints cloathes deceive O comely dresse Like to a Long-Lane Doublets wide excesse How like a Sack it sits Less far would fit Did he proportion but his garb and Wit The Wight mistakes his size each Wiseman sees His mens Fourteens shrink to a childrens Threes Fill out thy title man think'st thou canst daunt By pointing to the sword of Iohn of Gaunt Thou canst not wield it yet an empty name Do's no more feats then a meer painted flame Rare Soul whose words refin'd from flesh and blood Are neither to be felt nor understood But if they sacred be because not sense To Bedlam Sirs the best Divines come thence Your new-found Lights may like a falling Starre Seem heav'nly Lamps when they but Gellies are And high swoln Wombs bid fair but time grown nigh The promis'd birth proves but a Tympanic Should Superstition what it most doth fly Seek to take shelter in Philosophy And Sacred Writ sole image of sure truth Be pull'd by th' nose by every idle youth And made to bend as seeming to incline To all the fooleries hee 'l call Divine Find out the Word in Scripture all is found Swarms of Conceits buzze up from this one ground As if the Cobler all his crade would show From mention made of Gibeon's clouted shooe Or Bakers their whole Art at large would read From the 〈◊〉 record of the mouldy Bread Is this the Spirit thus confus'dly mad Antipodall to him the Chaos had Fell boystous blast that with one Magick puss Turns the Schools Glory to a Farthing snuff And 'gainst that ancient Sage the World adores Like to a Lapland Whirlewind loudly roares Yet from thy Travels in the search of things Ridiculous Swain what shallow stuff thou bring'st What cloathes they wear Vaiss Tiff'nies dost relate Thou art Philosophies Tom Cortat Else brave Des Cartes whom fools cannot admire Had nere been sing'd by thy wild Whimzy fire Poore Galen's Antichrist though one Purge of his Might so unmagick thee as make thee wise Physick cures phrenzy knows inspired wit Oft proves a meer Hypochondriack fit Agrippa's Dog sure kennels in thy weambe Thou yelpest so and barkest in a dreame Or if awake thou dost on him so fawn And bite all else that hence his Dog th' art known But I will spare the lash 't was my friends task Who rescuing Truth engag'd put on this mask Thus do's some carefull Prince disguised goe To keep his Subjects from th' intended blow Nor could his lofty soul so low descend But to uncheat the World a noble end And now the night is gone we plainly find 'T was not a Light but rotten Wood that thin'd We owe this day my dearest friend to thee All Eyes but Night-birds now th' Imposaure see J. T. FINIS