the full measure and complement of happiness where the boundless appetite of that spirit remains compleatly satisfied that it can neither desire addition nor alteration that I think is truly Heaven and this can onely be in the injoyment of that essence whose infinite goodness is able to terminate the desires of it self and the unsatiable wishes of ours wherever God will thus manifest himself there is Heaven though within the circle of this sensible world Thus the Soul of man may be in Heaven any where even within the limits of his own proper body and when it ceaseth to live in the body it may remain in its own soul that is its Creator And thus we may say that St. Paul whether in the body or out of the body was yet in Heaven To place it in the Empyreal or beyond the tenth sphear is to forget the worlds destruction for when this sensible world shall be destroyed all shall then be here as it is now there an Empyreal Heaven a quasi vacuity when to ask where Heaven is is to demand where the Presence of God is or where we have the glory of that happy vision Moses that was bred up in all the learning of the Egyptians committed a gross absurdity in Philosophy when with these eyes of flesh he desired to see God and petitioned his Maker that is truth it self to a contradiction Those that imagine Heaven and Hell neighbours and conceive a vicinity between those two extreams upon consequence of the Parable where Dives discoursed with Lazarus in Abraham's bosome do too grosly conceive of those glorified creatures whose eyes shall easily out-see the Sun and behold without a perspective the extreamest distances for if there shall be in our glorified eyes the faculty of sight and reception of objects I could think the visible species there to be in as unlimitable a way as now the intellectual I grant that two bodies placed beyond the tenth sphear of in a vacuity according to Aristotle's Philosophy could not behold each other because there wants a body or Medium to hand and transport the visible rays of the object unto the sense but when there shall be a general defect of either Medium to convey or light to prepare and dispose that Medium and yet a perfect vision we must suspend the rules of our Philosophy and make all good by a more absolute piece of opticks I cannot tell how to say that fire is the essence of Hell I know not what to make of Purgatory * or conceive a flame that can either prey upon or purifie the substance of a Soul those flames of sulphur mention'd in the Scriptures I take not to be understood of this present Hell but of that to come where fire shall make up the complement of our tortures and have a body or subject wherein to manifest its tyranny Some who have had the honour to be textuary in Divinity are of opinion it shall be the same specifical fire with ours This is hard to conceive yet can I make good how even that may prey upon our bodies and yet not consume us for in this material World there are bodies that persist invincible in the powerfullest flames and though by the action of fire they fall into ignition and liquation yet will they never suffer a destruction I would gladly know how Moses with an actual fire calcin'd or burnt the Golden Calf unto powder for that mystical metal of Gold whose solary and celestial nature I admire exposed unto the violence of fire grows onely hot and liquifies but consumaeth not so when the consumble and volatile pieces of our bodies shall be refined into a more impregnable and fixed temper like Gold though they suffer from the actions of flames they shall never perish but lye immortal in the arms of fire And surely if this frame must suffer onely by the action of this element there will many bodies escape and not onely Heaven but Earth will not be at an end but rather a beginning For at present it is not earth but a composition of fire water earth and air but at that time spoiled of these ingredients it shall appear in a substance more like it self its ashes Philosophers that opinioned the worlds destruction by fire did never dream of annihilation which is beyond the power of sublunary causes for the last action of that element is but vitrification or a reduction of a body into glass and therefore some of our Chymicks facetiously affirm that at the last fire all shall be christallized and reverberated into glass which is the utmost action of that element Nor need we fear this term annihilation or wonder that God will destroy the works of his Creation for man subsisting who is and will then truely appear a Microcosm the world cannot be said to be destroyed For the eyes of God and perhaps also of our glorified selves shall as really behold and contemplate the World in its Epitome or contracted essence as now it doth at large and in its dilated substance in the seed of a Plant to the eyes of God and to the understanding of man there exists though in an invisible way the perfect leaves flowers and fruit thereof for things that are in posse to the sense are actually existent to the understanding Thus God beholds all things who contemplates as fully his works in their Epitome as in their full volume and beheld as amply the whole world in that little compendium of the sixth day as in the scattered and dilated pieces of those five before Sect. 51 Men commonly set forth the torments of Hell by fire and the extremity of corporal afflictions and describe Hell in the same method that Mahomet doth Heaven This indeed makes a noise and drums in popular ears but if this be the terrible piece thereof it is not worthy to stand in diameter with Heaven whose happiness consists in that part that is best able to comprehend it that immortal essence that translated divinity and colony of God the Soul Surely though we place Hell under Earth the Devil's walk and purlue is about it men speak too popularly who place it in those flaming mountains which to grosser apprehensions represent Hell The heart of man is the place the Devils dwell in I feel sometimes a Hell within my self Lucifer keeps his Court in my breast Legion is revived in me * There are as many Hells as Anaxagoras conceited worlds there was more than one Hell in Magdalene when there were seven Devils for every Devil is an Hell unto himself he holds enough of torture in his own ubi and needs not the misery of circumference to afflict him And thus a distracted Conscience here is a shadow or introduction unto Hell hereafter Who can but pity the merciful intention of those hands that do destroy themselves the Devil were it in his power would do the like which being impossible his miseries are endless and he suffers most in that attribute wherein
I chuse for my devotions but * our grosser memories have then so little hold of our abstracted understandings that they forget the story and can only relate to our awaked souls a confused and broken tale of that that hath passed Aristotle who hath written a singular Tract of Sleep hath not methinks throughly defined it nor yet Galen though he seem to have corrected it for those Noctambuloes and night-walkers though in their sleep do yet injoy the action of their senses we must therefore say that there is something in us that is not in the jurisdiction of Morpheus and that those abstracted and ecstatick souls do walk about in their own corps as spirits with the bodies they assume wherein they seem to hear and feel though indeed the Organs are destitute of sense and their natures of those faculties that should inform them Thus it is observed that men sometimes upon the hour of their departure do speak and reason above themselves For then the soul beginning to be freed from the ligaments of the body begins to reason like her self and to discourse in a strain above mortality Sect. 12 We tearm sleep a death and yet it is waking that kills us and destroys those spirits that are the house of life 'T is indeed a part of life that best expresseth death for every man truely lives so long as he acts his nature or some way makes good the faculties of himself Themistocles therefore that slew his Soldier in his sleep was a merciful Executioner 't is a kind of punishment the mildness of no laws hath invented * I wonder the fancy of Lucan and Seneca did not discover it It is that death by which we may be literally said to dye daily a death which Adam dyed before his mortality a death whereby we live a middle and moderating point between life and death in fine so like death I dare not trust it without my prayers and an half adieu unto the World and take my farewel in a Colloquy with God The night is come like to the day Depart not thou great God away Let not my sins black as the night Eclipse the lustre of thy light Keep still in my Horizon for to me The Sun makes not the day but thee Thou whose nature cannot sleep On my temples centry keep Guard me ' gainst those watchful foes Whose eyes are open while mine close Let no dreams my head infest But such as Jacob''s temples blest While I do rest my Soul advance Make my sleep a holy trance That I may my rest being wrought Awake into some holy thought And with as active vigour run My course as doth the nimble Sun Sleep is a death O make me try By sleeping what it is to die And as gently lay my head On my grave as now my bed Howere I rest great God let me Awake again at least with thee And thus assur'd behold I lie Securely or to awake or die These are my drowsie days in vain I do now wake to sleep again O come that hour when I shall never Sleep again but wake for ever This is the Dormative I take to bedward I need no other Laudanum than this to make me sleep after which I close mine eyes in security content to take my leave of the Sun and sleep unto the resurrection Sect. 13 The method I should use in distributive Justice I often observe in commutative and keep a Geometrical proportion in both whereby becoming equable to others I become unjust to my self and supererogate in that common principle Do unto others as then wouldst he done unto thy self I was not born unto riches neither is it I think my Star to be wealthy or if it were the freedom of my mind and frankness of my disposition were able to contradict and cross my fates For to me avarice seems not so much a vice as a deplorable piece of madness * to conceive our selves Urinals or be perswaded that we are dead is not so ridiculous nor so many degrees beyond the power of Hellebore as this The opinion of Theory and positions of men are not so void of reason as their practised conclusions some have held that Snow is black that the earth moves that the Soul is air fire water but all this is Philosophy and there is no delirium if we do but speculate the folly and indisputable dotage of avarice to that subterraneous Idol and God of the Earth I do confess I am an Atheist I cannot perswade my self to honour that the World adores whatsoever vertue its prepared substance may have within my body it hath no influence nor operation without I would not entertain a base design or an action that should call me villain for the Indies and for this only do I love and honour my own soul and have methinks two arms too few to embrace my self Aristotle is too severe that will not allow us to be truely liberal without wealth and the bountiful hand of Fortune if this be true I must confess I am charitable only in my liberal intentions and bountiful well-wishes But if the example of the Mite be not only an act of wonder but an example of the noblest Charity surely poor men may also build Hospitals and the rich alone have not erected Cathedrals I have a private method which others observe not I take the opportunity of my self to do good I borrow occasion of Charity from mine own necessities and supply the wants of others when I am in most need my self for it is an honest stratagem to make advantage of our selves and so to husband the acts of vertue that where they were defective in one circumstance they may repay their want and multiply their goodness in another I have not Peru in my desires but a competence and ability to perform those good works to which he hath inclined my nature He is rich who hath enough to be charitable and it is hard to be so poor that a noble mind may not find a way to this piece of goodness He that giveth to the poor lendeth to the Lord there is more Rhetorick in that one sentence than in a Library of Sermons and indeed if those Sentences were understood by the Reader with the same Emphasis as they are delivered by the Author we needed not those Volumes of instructions but might be honest by an Epitome Upon this motive only I cannot behold a Beggar without relieving his Necessities with my Purse or his Soul with my Prayers these scenical and accidental differences between us cannot make me forget that common and untoucht part of us both there is under these Cantoes and miserable outsides these mutilate and semi bodies a soul of the same alloy with our own whose Genealogy is Gods as well as ours and is as fair a way to Salvation as our selves Statists that labour to contrive a Common-wealth without our poverty take away the object of charity not understanding only the Common wealth of Christian but
our secondine that is this slough of flesh and are delivered into the last world that is that ineffable place of Paul that proper ubi of spirits The smattering I have of the Philosophers Stone which is something more then the perfect exaltation of Gold hath taught me a great deal of Divinity and instructed my belief how that immortal spirit and incorruptible substance of my Soul may lye obscure and sleep a while within this house of flesh Those strange and mystical transmigrations that I have observed in Silk-worms turned my Philosophy into Divinity There is in these works of nature which seem to puzzle reason something Divine and hath more in it then the eye of a common spectator doth discover Sect. 40 I am naturally bashful nor hath conversation age or travel been able to effront or enharden me yet I have one part of modesty which I have seldom discovered in another that is to speak truely I am not so much afraid of death as ashamed thereof 't is the very disgrace and ignominy of our natures that in a moment can so disfigure us that our nearest friends Wife and Children stand afraid and start at us The Birds and Beasts of the field that before in a natural fear obeyed us forgetting all allegiance begin to prey upon us This very conceit hath in a tempest disposed and left me willing to be swallowed up in the abyss of waters wherein I had perished unseen unpityed without wondering eyes tears of pity Lectures of mortality and none had said Quantum mutatus ab illo Not that I am ashamed of the Anatomy of my parts or can accuse Nature for playing the bungler in any part of me or my own vitious life for contracting any shameful disease upon me whereby I might not call my self as wholesome a morsel for the worms as any Sect. 41 Some upon the courage of a fruitful issue wherein as in the truest Chronicle they seem to outlive themselves can with greater patience away with death This conceit and counterfeit subsisting in our progenies seems to be a meer fallacy unworthy the desires of a man that can but conceive a thought of the next World who in a nobler ambition should desire to live in his substance in Heaven rather than his name and shadow in the earth And therefore at my death I mean to take a total adieu of the world not caring for a Monument History or Epitaph not so much as the memory of my name to be found any where but in the universal Register of God I am not yet so Cynical as to approve the Testament of Diogenes nor do I altogether allow that Rodomontado of Lucan Coelo tegitur qui non habet urnam He that unburied lies wants not his Herse For unto him a Tomb's the Vniverse But commend in my calmer judgement those ingenuous intentions that desire to sleep by the urns of theirs Fathers and strive to go the neatest way unto corruption * I do not envy the temper of Crows and Daws nor the numerous and weary days of our Fathers before the Flood If there be any truth in Astrology I may outlive a Jubilee as yet I have not seen one revolution of Saturn nor hath my pulse beat thirty years and yet excepting one have seen the Ashes left underground all the Kings of Europe have been contemporary to three Emperours four Grand Signiours and as many Popes methinks I have outlived my self and begin to be weary of the Sun I have shaken hands with delight in my warm blood and Canicular days I perceive I do anticipate the vices of age the World to me is but a dream or mock-show and we all therein but Pantalones and Anticks to my severer contemplations Sect. 42 It is not I confess an unlawful Prayer to desire to surpass the days of our Saviour or wish to outlive that age wherein he thought fittest to dye yet if as Divinity affirms there shall be no gray hairs in Heaven but all shall rise in the perfect state of men we do but outlive those perfections in this World to be recalled unto them by a greater Miracle in the next and run on here but to be retrograde hereafter Were there any hopes to outlive vice or a point to be super-annuated from sin it were worthy our knees to implore the days of Methuselah But age doth not rectifie but incurvate our natures turning bad dispositions into worser habits and like diseases brings on incurable vices for every day as we grow weaker in age we grow stronger in sin and the number of our days doth but make our sins innumerable The same vice committed at sixteen is not the same though it agrees in all other circumstances as at forty but swells and doubles from that circumstance of our ages wherein besides the constant and inexcusable habit of transgressing the maturity of our judgement cuts off pretence unto excuse or pardon every sin the oftner it is committed the more it acquireth in the quality of evil as it succeeds in time so it proceeds in degrees of badness for as they proceed they ever multiply and like figures in Arithmetick the last stands for more than all that went before it And though I think no man can live well once but he that could live twice yet for my own part I would not live over my hours past or begin again the thred of my days * not upon Cicero's ground because I have lived them well but for fear I should live them worse I find my growing Judgment daily instruct me how to be better but my untamed affections and confirmed vitiosity makes me daily do worse I find in my confirmed age the same sins I discovered in my youth I committed many then because I was a Child and because I commit them still I am yet an infant Therefore I perceive a man may be twice a Child before the days of dotage ‖ and stand in need of Aesons bath before threescore Sect. 43 And truely there goes a great deal of providence to produce a mans life unto threescore there is more required than an able temper for those years though the radical humour contain in it sufficient oyl for seventy yet I perceive in some it gives no light past thirty men assign not all the causes of long life that write whole Books thereof They that found themselves on the radical balsome or vital sulphur of the parts determine not why Abel lived not so long as Adam There is therefore a secret glome or bottome of our days 't was his wisdom to determine them but his perpetual and waking providence that fulfils and accomplisheth them wherein the spirits our selves and all the creatures of God in a secret and disputed way do execute his will Let them not therefore complain of immaturity that dye about thirty they fall but like the whole World whose solid and well-composed substance must not expect the duration and period of its constitution when all
action that it is a lesson to be good and we are forced to be virtuous by the book Again the Practice of men holds not an equal pace yea and often runs counter to their Theory we naturally know what is good but naturally pursue what is evil the Rhetorick wherewith I perswade another cannot perswade my self there is a depraved appetite in us that will with patience hear the learned instructions of Reason but yet perform no farther than agrees to its own irregular humour In brief we all are monsters that is a composition of Man and Beast wherein we must endeavour to be as the Poets fancy that wise man Chiron that is to have the Region of Man above that of Beast and Sense to sit but at the feet of Reason Lastly I do desire with God that all but yet affirm with men that few shall know Salvation that the bridge is narrow the passage straight unto life yet those who do confine the Church of God either to particular Nations Churches or Families have made it far narrower then our Saviour ever meant it Sect. 56 * The vulgarity of those judgements that wrap the Church of God in Strabo's cloak and restrain it unto Europe seem to me as bad Geographers as Alexander who thought he had Conquer'd all the World when he had not subdued the half of any part thereof For we cannot deny the Church of God both in Asia and Africa if we do not forget the Peregrinations of the Apostles the deaths of the Martyrs the Sessions of many and even in our reformed judgement lawful Councils held in those parts in the minority and nonage of ours Nor must a few differences more remarkable in the eyes of man than perhaps in the judgement of God excommunicate from Heaven one another much less those Christians who are in a manner all Martyrs maintaining their Faith in the noble way of perfecution and serving God in the Fire whereas we honour him in the Sunshine 'T is true we all hold there is a number of Elect and many to be saved yet take our Opinions together and from the confusion thereof there will be no such thing as salvation nor shall any one be saved For first the Church of Rome condemneth us we likewise them the Sub-reformists and Sectaries sentence the Doctrine of our Church as damnable the Atomist or Familist reprobates all these and all these them again Thus whilst the Mercies of God do promise us Heaven our conceits and opinions exclude us from that place There must be therefore more than one St. Peter particular Churches and Sects usurp the gates of Heaven and turn the key against each other and thus we go to Heaven against each others wills conceits and opinions and with as much uncharity as ignorance do err I fear in points not only of our own but one anothers salvation Sect. 57 I believe many are saved who to man seem reprobated and many are reprobated who in the opinion and sentence of man stand elected there will appear at the Last day strange and unexpected examples both of his Justice and his Mercy and therefore to define either is folly in man and insolency even in the Devils those acute and subtil spirits in all their sagacity can hardly divine who shall be saved which if they could Prognostick their labour were at an end nor need they compass the earth seeking whom they may devour * Those who upon a rigid application of the Law sentence Solomon unto damnation condemn not onely him but themselves and the whole World for by the Letter and written Word of God we are without exception in the state of Death but there is a prerogative of God and an arbitrary pleasure above the Letter of his own Law by which alone we can pretend unto Salvation and through which Solomon might be as easily saved as those who condemn him Sect. 58 The number of those who pretend unto Salvation and those infinite swarms who think to pass through the eye of this Needle have much amazed me That name and compellation of little Flock doth not comfort but deject my Devotion especially when I reflect upon mine own unworthiness wherein according to my humble apprehensions I am below them all I believe there shall never be an Anarchy in Heaven but as there are Hierarchies amongst the Angels so shall there be degrees of priority amongst the Saints Yet is it I protest beyond my ambition to aspire unto the first ranks my desires onely are and I shall be happy therein to be but the last man and bring up the Rere in Heaven Sect. 59 Again I am confident and fully perswaded yet dare not take my oath of my Salvation I am as it were sure and do believe without all doubt that there is such a City as Constantinople yet for me to take my Oath thereon were a kind of Perjury because I hold no infallible warrant from my own sense to confirm me in the certainty thereof And truly though many pretend an absolute certainty of their Salvation yet when an humble Soul shall contemplate our own unworthiness she shall meet with many doubts and suddenly find how little we stand in need of the Precept of St. Paul Work out your salvation with fear and trembling That which is the cause of my Election I hold to be the cause of my Salvation which was the mercy and beneplacit of God before I was or the foundation of the World Before Abraham was I am is the saying of Christ yet is it true in some sense if I say it of my self for I was not onely before my self but Adam that is in the Idea of God and the decree of that Synod held from all Eternity And in this sense I say the World was before the Creation and at an end before it had a beginning and thus was I dead before I was alive though my grave be England my dying place was Paradise and Eve miscarried of me before she conceiv'd of Cain Sect. 60 Insolent zeals that do decry good Works and rely onely upon Faith take not away merit for depending upon the efficacy of their Faith they enforce the condition of God and in a more sophistical way do seem to challenge Heaven It was decreed by God that only those that lapt in the water like Dogs should have the honour to destroy the Midianites yet could none of those justly challenge or imagine he deserved that honour thereupon I do not deny but that true Faith and such as God requires is not onely a mark or token but also a means of our Salvation but where to find this is as obscure to me as my last end And if our Saviour could object unto his own Disciples and Favourites a Faith that to the quantity of a grain of Mustard-seed is able to remove Mountains surely that which we boast of is not any thing or at the most but a remove from nothing This is the Tenor of my belief
manner under an Armour of Proof that he is almost invulnerable he can scarce miscarry he hath not so much as an inclination to work contrarily the Alluring Baits of this World tempt him not he disliketh he hateth even his necessarry Commerce with them whilst he liveth On the other side the Hireling that steereth his course by his Reward and Punishment doth well I confess but he doth it with Reluctance he carrieth the Ark God's Image his Soul safely home it is true but he loweth pitifully after his Calves that he leaveth behind him among the Philistines In a word he is vertuous but if he might safely he would do vicious things And hence be the ground in Nature if so I might say of our Purgatory Methinks two such minds may not unfitly be compared to two Maids whereof one hath a little sprinkling of the Green sickness and hath more mind to Ashes Chalk or Leather than meats of solid and good nourishment but forbeareth them knowing the languishing condition of Health it will bring her to But the other having a ruddy vigorous and perfect Constitution and enjoying a compleat entire Encrasie delights in no food but of good nouriture and loaths the other Delights Her Health is discovered in her looks and she is secure from any danger of that Malady whereas the other for all her good Diet beareth in her Complexion some sickly Testimony of her depraved Appetite and if she be not very wary she is in danger of a relapse It falleth fit in this place to examine our Authors apprehension of the end of such honest Worthies and Philosophers as he calleth them that died before Christ his Incarnation Whether any of them could be saved or no Truly my Lord I make no doubt at all but if any followed in the whole Tenor of their lives the Dictamens of right Reason but that their journey was secure to Heaven Out of the former Discourse appeareth what temper of mind is necessary to get thither And that Reason would dictate such a temper to a perfectly judicious man though but in the state of Nature as the best and most rational for him I make no doubt at all But it is most true they are exceeding few if any in whom Reason worketh clearly and is not overswayed by Passion and terrene Affections they are few that can discern what is reasonable to be done in every Circumstance Pauci quos aequus amavit Jupiter aut ardens evexit ad aethera virtus Diis geniti potuere And fewer that knowing what is best can win of themselves to do accordingly Video meliora proboque deteriora sequor being most mens cases so that after all that can be expected at the hands of Nature and Reason in their best Habit since the lapse of them we may conclude it would have been a most difficult thing for any man and a most impossible one for mankind to attain unto Beatitude if Christ had not come to teach and by his example to shew us the way And this was the Reason of his Incarnation teaching Life and Death For being God we could not doubt his Veracity when he tolds us news of the other world having all things in his Power and yet enjoying none of the Delights of this Life no man should stick at foregoing them since his Example sheweth all men that such a course is best whereas few are capable of the Reason of it And for his last Act dying in such an afflicted manner he taught us how the securest way to step immediately into Perfect Happiness is to be crucified to all the desires Delights and Contentments of this World But to come back to our Physician Truly my Lord I must needs pay him as a due the acknowledging his pious Discourses to be Excellent and Pathetical ones containing worthy Motives to incite one to Vertue and to deter one from Vice thereby to gain Heaven and to avoid Hell Assuredly he is owner of a solid Head and of a strong generous Heart Where he employeth his thoughts upon such things as resort to no higher or more abstruse Principles than such as occur in ordinary Conversation with the World or in the common Tract of Study and Learning I know no man would say better But when he meeteth with such difficulties as his next concerning the Resurrection of the Body wherein after deep Meditation upon the most abstracted Principles and Speculations of the Metaphysicks one hath much ado to solve the appearing Contradictions in Nature There I do not at all wonder he should tread a little awry and go astray in the dark for I conceive his course of life hath not permitted him to allow much time unto the unwinding of such entangled and abstracted Subtleties But if it had I believe his Natural parts are such as he might have kept the Chair from most men I know For even where he roveth widest it is with so much wit and sharpness as putteth me in mind of a great mans Censure upon Scaliger's Cyclometrica a matter he was not well versed in That he had rather err so ingeniously as he did than hit upon Truth in that heavy manner as the Jesuit his Antagonist stuffeth his Books Most assuredly his wit and smartness in this Discourse is of the finest Standard and his insight into severer Learning will appear as piercing unto such as use not strictly the Touchstone and the Test to examine every piece of the glittering Coyn he payeth his Reader with But to come to the Resurrection Methinks it is but a gross Conception to think that every Atome of the present individual Matter of a Body every grain of Ashes of a burned Cadaver scattered by the Wind throughout the World and after numerous Variations changed peradventure into the Body of another man should at the sounding of the last Trumpet be raked together again from all the corners of the Earth and be made up anew into the same Body it was before of the first Man Yet if we will be Christians and rely upon God's Promises we must believe that we shall rise again with the same Body that walked about did eat drink and live here on Earth and that we shall see our Saviour and Redeemer with the same the very same eyes wherewith we now look upon the fading Glories of this comtemptible World How shall these seeming Contrarieties be reconciled If the latter be true why should not the former be admitted To explicate this Riddle the better give me leave to ask your Lordship if your Lordship if you now see the Cannons the Ensigns the Arms and other Martial Preparations at Oxford with the same Eyes wherewith many years agone you looked upon Porphyrie's and Aristotle's Leases there I doubt not but you will answer me Assuredly with the very same Is that Noble and Graceful Person of yours that begetteth both Delight and Reverence in every one that looketh upon it Is that Body of yours that now is grown to such comely and
where the Ability of subtil Disputing to and fro is more prized than the retriving of Truth But such as filleth the mind with solid and useful notions and doth not endanger the swelling it up with windy vanities Besides the sweetest Companion and entertainment of a well-tempered mind is to converse familiarly with the naked and bewitching beauties of those Mistresses those Verities and Sciences which by fair courting of them they gain and enjoy and every day bring new fresh ones to their Seraglio where the ancientest never grow old or stale Is there any thing so pleasing or so profitable as this Nil dulcius est bene quam munita tenere Edita doctrina sapientum templa serena Despicere unde queas alios passimque videre Errare atque viam palanteis quoarere vitae But now if we consider the advantage we shall have in the other life by our affection to Sciences and conversation with them in this it is wonderful great Indeed that affection is so necessary as without it we shall enjoy little contentment in all the knowledge we shall then be replenished with for every ones pleasure in the possession of a good is to be measured by his precedent Desire of that good and by the equality of the taste and relish of him that feedeth upon it We should therefore prepare and make our taste before-hand by Assuefaction unto and by often relishing what we shall then be nourished with That Englishman that can drink nothing but Beer or Ale would be ill bestead were he to go into Spain or Italy where nothing but Wine groweth whereas a well-experienced Goinfre that can criticize upon the several tastes of Liquors would think his Palate in Paradise among those delicious Nectars to use Aretines phrase upon his eating of a Lamprey Who was ever delighted with Tobacco the first time he took it And who could willingly be without it after he was a while habituated to the use of it How many examples are there daily of young men that marrying upon their Fathers command not through precedent affections of their own have little comfort in worthy and handsome Wives that others would passionately affect Archimedes lost his life for being so ravished with the delight of a Mathematical Demonstration that he could not of a sudden recal his extasied Spirits to attend the rude Souldiers Summons But instead of him whose mind hath been always fed with such subtil Diet how many plain Country-Gentlemen doth your Lordship and I know that rate the knowledge of their Husbandry at a much higher pitch and are extreamly delighted by conversing with that whereas the other would be most tedious and importune to them We may then safely conclude That if we will joy in the Knowledge we shall have after Death we must in our life-time raise within our selves earnest affections to it and desires of it which cannot be barren ones but will press upon us to gain some Knowledge by way of advance here and the more we attain unto the more we shall be in Love with what remaineth behind To this reason then adding the other How knowledge is the surest prop and guide of our present life and how it perfecteth a man in that which constituteth a man his Reason and how it enableth him to tread boldly steadily constantly and knowingly in all his ways And I am confident all men that shall hear the Case thus debated will joyn with me in making it a Suit to our Physitian that he will keep his Books open and continue that Progress he hath so happily begun But I believe your Lordship will scarcely joyn with him in his wish that we might procreate and beget Children without the help of Women or without any Conjunction or Commerce with that sweet and bewitching Sex Plato taxeth his fellow Philosopher though otherwise a learned and brave man for not sacrificing to the Graces those gentle Female Goddesses What thinketh your Lordship of our Physitian 's bitter censure of that action which Mahomet maketh the Essence of his Paradise Indeed besides those his unkindnesses or rather frowardnesses at that tender-hearted Sex which must needs take it ill at his hands methinketh he setteth Marriage at too low a rate which is assuredly the highest and divinest link of humane Society And where he speaketh of Cupid and of Beauty it is in such a phrase as putteth me in mind of the Learned Greek Reader in Cambridge his courting of his Mistress out of Stephens his Thesaurus My next Observation upon his Discourse draweth me to a Logical consideration of the Nature of an exact Syllogism which kind of reflection though it use to open the door in the course of Learning and Study yet it will near shut it in my Discourse which my following the thred that my Author spinneth assigneth to this place If he had well and throughly considered all that is required to that strict way of managing our Reason he would not have censured Aristotle for condemning the fourth Figure out of no other motive but because it was not consonant to his own Principle that it would not fit with the Foundations himself had laid though it do with Reason saith he and be consonant to that which indeed it doth not at all times and in all Circumstances In a perfect Syllogism the Predicate must be identified with the Subject and each extream with the middle term and so consequently all three with one another But in Galen's fourth Figure the case may so fall out as these Rules will not be current there As for the good and excellency that he considereth in the worst things and how far from Solitude any man is in a Wilderness These are in his Discourse but equivocal considerations of Good and of Lowliness Nor are they any ways pertinent to the Mortality of that part where he treateth of them I have much ado to believe what he speaketh confidently That he is more beholding to Morpheus for Learned and Rational as well as pleasing Dreams than to Mercury for smart and facetious Conceptions whom Saturn it seemeth by his relation hath looked asquint upon in his Geniture In his concluding Prayer wherein he summeth up all he wisheth methinketh his Arrow is not winged with that fire which I should have expected from him upon this occasion For it is not the peace of Conscience nor the bridling up of ones affections that expresseth the highest dedlightfulness and happiest state of a perfect Christian It is love onely that can give us Heaven upon Earth as well as in Heaven and bringeth us thither too So that the Thuscan Virgil had reason to say In alte dolcezze Non si puo gioio se non amando And this Love must be imployed upon the noblest and highest Object not terminated in our Friends But of this transcendent and divine part of Charity that looketh directly and immediately upon God himself and that is the Intrinsecal Form the utmost Perfection the scope and final