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
a possibility of generation and therefore that opinion that Antichrist should be born of the Tribe of * Dan by conjunction with the Divil is ridiculous and a conceit fitter for a Rabbin than a Christian I hold that the Devil doth really possess some men the spirit of Melancholly others the spirit of Delusion others that as the Devil is concealed and denyed by some so God and good Angels are pretended by others whereof the late defection of the Maid of Germany hath left a pregnant example Sect. 31 Again I believe that all that use sorceries incantations and spells are not Witches or as we term them Magicians I conceive there is a traditional Magick not learned immediately from the Devil but at second hand from his Scholars who having once the secret betrayed are able and do emperically practise without his advice they proceeding upon the principles of Nature where actives aptly conjoyned to disposed passives will under any Master produce their effects Thus I think at first a part of Philosophy was Witchcraft which being afterward derived to one another proved but Philosophy and was indeed no more but the honest effects of Nature What invented by us is Philosophy learned from him is Magick We do surely owe the discovery of many secrets to the discovery of good and bad Angels I could never pass that sentence of Paracelsus without an asterisk or annotation Ascendens constellatum multa revelat quaerentibus magnalia naturae i. e. opera Dei I do think that many mysteries ascribed to our own inventions have been the courteous revelations of Spirits for those noble essences in Heaven bear a friendly regard unto their fellow Nature on Earth and therefore believe that those many prodigies and ominous prognosticks which fore-run the ruines of States Princes and private persons are the charitable premonitions of good Angels which more careless enquiries term but the effects of chance and nature Sect. 32 Now besides these particular and divided Spirits there may be for ought I know an universal and common Spirit to the whole World It was the opinion of Plato and it is yet of the Hermetical Philosophers if there be a common nature that unites and tyes the scattered and divided individuals into one species why may there not be one that unites them all However I am sure there is a common Spirit that plays within us yet makes no part in us and that is the Spirit of God the fire and fcintillation of that noble and mighty Essence which is the life and radical heat of spirits and those essences that know not the vertue of the Sun a fire quite contrary to the fire of Hell This is that gentle heat that brooded on the waters and in six days hatched the World this is that irradiation that dispels the mists of Hell the clouds of horrour fear sorrow despair and preserves the region of the mind in serenity whatsoever feels not the warm gale and gentle ventilation of this Spirit though I feel his pulse I dare not say he lives for truely without this to me there is no heat under the Tropick nor any light though I dwelt in the body of the Sun As when the labouring Sun hath wrought his track Vp to the top of lofty Cancers back The ycie Ocean cracks the frozen pole Thaws with the heat of the Celestial coale So when thy absent beams begin t' impart Again a Solstice on my frozen heart My winter's ov'r my drooping spirits sing And every part revives into a Spring But if thy quickning beams a while decline And with their light bless not this Orb of mine A chilly frost surpriseth every member And in the midst of June I feel December O how this earthly temper doth debase The noble Soul in this her humble place Whose wingy nature ever doth aspire To reach that place whence first it took its fire These flames I feel which in my heart do dwell Are not thy beams but take their fire from Hell O quench them all and let thy light divine Be as the Sun to this poor Orb of mine And to thy sacred Spirit convert those fires Whose earthly fumes choak my devout aspires Sect. 33 Therefore for Spirits I am so far from denying their existence that I could easily believe that not onely whole Countries but particular persons have their Tutelary and Guardian Angels * It is not a new opinion of the Church of Rome but an old one of Pythagoras and Plato there is no heresie in it and if not manifestly defin'd in Scripture yet is an opinion of a good and wholesome use in the course and actions of a mans life and would serve as an Hypothesis to salve many doubts whereof common Philosophy affordeth no solution Now if you demand my opinion and Metaphysicks of their natures I confess them very shallow most of them in a negative way like that of God or in a comparative between our selves and fellow-creatures for there is in this Universe a Stair or manifest Scale of creatures rising not disorderly or in confusion but with a comely method and proportion Between creatures of meer existence and things of life there is a large disproportion of nature between plants and animals of creatures of sense a wider difference between them and man a far greater and if the proportion hold one between Man an Angels there should be yet a greater We do not comprehend their natures who retain the first definition of Porphyry and distinguish them from our selves by immortality for before his Fall 't is thought Man also was Immortal yet must we needs affirm that he had a different essence from the Angels having therefore no certain knowledge of their Natures 't is no bad method of the Schools whatsoever perfection we find obscurely in our selves in a more compleat and absolute way to ascribe unto them I believe they have an extemporary knowledge and upon the first motion of their reason do what we cannot without study or deliberation that they know things by their forms and define by specifical difference what we describe by accidents and properties and therefore probabilities to us may be demonstrations unto them that they have knowledge not onely of the specifical but numerical forms of individuals and understand by what reserved difference each single Hypostasis besides the relation to its species becomes its numerical self That as the Soul hath a power to move the body it informs so there 's a faculty to move any though inform none ours upon restraint of time place and distance but that invisible hand that conveyed Habakkuk to the Lyons Den or Philip to Azotus infringeth this rule and hath a secret conveyance wherewith mortality is not acquainted if they have that intuitive knowledge whereby as in reflexion they behold the thoughts of one another I cannot peremptorily deny but they know a great part of ours They that to refute the Invocation of Saints have denied that they have any knowledge of
things are compleated in it its age is accomplished and the last and general fever may as naturally destroy it before six thousand as me before forty there is therefore some other hand that twines the thread of life than that of Nature we are not onely ignorant in Antipathies and occult qualities our ends are as obscure as our beginnings the line of our days is drawn by night and the various effects therein by a pensil that is invisible wherein though we confess our ignorance I am sure we do not err if we say it is the hand of God Sect. 44 I am much taken with two verses of Lucan since I have been able not onely as we do at School to construe but understand Victurosque Dei celant ut vivere durent Felix esse mori We 're all deluded vainly searching ways To make us happy by the length of days For cunningly to make's protract his breath The Gods conceal the happiness of Death There be many excellent strains in that Poet wherewith his Stoical Genius hath liberally supplied him and truely there are singular pieces in the Philosophy of Zeno and doctrine of the Stoicks which I perceive delivered in a Pulpit pass for current Divinity yet herein are they in extreams that can allow a man to be his own Assassine and so highly* extol the end and suicide of Cato this is indeed not to fear death but yet to be afraid of life It is a brave act of valour to contemn death but where life is more terrible than deathd it is then the truest valour to dare to live and herein Religion hath taught us a noble example For all the valiant acts of Curtius Scevola or Codrus do not parallel or match that one of Job and sure there is no torture to the rack of a disease nor any Ponyards in death it self like those in the way or prologue to it * Emori nolo sed me esse mortuum nihil curo I would not dye but care not to be dead Were I of Caesar's Religion I should be of his desires and wish rather to go off at one blow then to be sawed in pieces by the grating torture of a disease Men that look no farther than their outsides think health an appurtenance unto life and quarrel with their constitutions for being sick but I that have examined the parts of man and know upon what tender filaments that Fabrick hangs do wonder that we are not always so and considering the thousand doors that lead to death do thank my God that we can die but once 'T is not onely the mischief of diseases and villany of poysons that make an end of us we vainly accuse the fury of Guns and the new inventions of death it is in the power of every hand to destroy us and we are beholding unto every one we meet he doth not kill us There is therefore but one comfort left that though it be in the power of the weakest arm to take away life it is not in the strongest to deprive us of death God would not exempt himself from that the misery of immortality in the flesh he undertook not that was immortal Certainly there is no happiness within this circle of flesh nor is it in the Opticks of these eyes to behold felicity the first day of our Jubilee is Death the Devil hath therefore failed of his desires we are happier with death than we should have been without it there is no misery but in himself where there is no end of misery and so indeed in his own sense the Stoick is in the right He forgets that he can dye who complains of misery we are in the power of no calamity while death is in our own Sect. 45 Now besides the literal and positive kind of death there are others whereof Divines makes mention and those I think not meerly Metaphorical as mortification dying unto sin and the World therefore I say every man hath a double Horoscope one of his humanity his birth another of his Christianity his baptism and from this do I compute or calculate my Nativity not reckoning those Horae combustae and odd days or esteeming my self any thing before I was my Saviours and inrolled in the Register of Christ Whosoever enjoys not this life I count him but an apparition though he wear about him the sensible affections of flesh In these moral acceptions the way to be immortal is to dye daily nor can I think I have the true Theory of death when I contemplate a skull or behold a Skeleton with those vulgar imaginations it casts upon us I have therefore inlarged that common Memento mori into a more Christian memorandum Memento quatuor Novissima those four inevitable points of us all Death Judgement Heaven and Hell Neither did the contemplations of the Heathens rest in their graves without further thought of Rhadamanth or some judicial proceeding after death though in another way and upon suggestion of their natural reasons I cannot but marvail from what Sibyl or Oracle they stole the Prophesie of the worlds destruction by fire or whence Lucan learned to say Communis mundo superest rogus ossibus astra Mist urus There yet remains to th' World one common Fire Wherein our bones with stars shall make one Pyre I believe the World grows near its end yet is neither old nor decayed nor shall ever perish upon the ruines of its own Principles As the work of Creation was above nature so its adversary annihilation without which the World hath not its end but its mutation Now what force should be able to consume it thus far without the breath of God which is the truest consuming flame my Philosophy cannot inform me Some believe there went not a minute to the Worlds creation nor shall there go to its destruction those six days so punctually described make not to them one moment but rather seem to manifest the method and Idea of the great work of the intellect of God than the manner how he proceeded in its operation I cannot dream that there should be at the last day any such Judicial proceeding or calling to the Bar as indeed the Scripture seems to imply and the literal Commentators do conceive for unspeakable mysteries in the Scriptures are often delivered in a vulgar and illustrative way and being written unto man are delivered not as they truely are but as they may be understood wherein notwithstanding the different interpretations according to different capacities may stand firm with our devotion nor be any way prejudicial to each single edification Sect. 46 Now to determine the day and year of this inevitable time is not onely convincible and statute-madness but also manifest impiety * How shall we interpret Elias 6000 years or imagine the secret communicated to a Rabbi which God hath denyed unto his Angels It had been an excellent Quaere to have posed the Devil of Delphos and must needs have forced him to some strange amphibology it hath
wound a thousand and at one blow assassine the honour of a Nation It is as compleat a piece of madness to miscal and rave against the times or think to recal men to reason by a fit of passion Democritus that thought to laugh the times into goodness seems to me as deeply Hypochondriack as Heraclitus that bewailed them It moves not my spleen to behold the multitude in their proper humours that is in their fits of folly and madness as well understanding that wisdom is not prophan'd unto the World and 't is the priviledge of a few to be Vertuous They that endeavour to abolish Vice destroy also Virtue for contraries though they destroy one another are yet in life of one another Thus Virtue abolish vice is an Idea again the community of sin doth not disparage goodness for when Vice gains upon the major part Virtue in whom it remains becomes more excellent and being lost in some multiplies its goodness in others which remain untouched and persist intire in the general inundation I can therefore behold Vice without a Satyr content only with an admonition or instructive reprehension for Noble Natures and such as are capable of goodness are railed into vice that might as easily be admonished into virtue and we should be all so far the Orators of goodness as to protract her from the power of Vice and maintain the cause of injured truth No man can justly censure or condemn another because indeed no man truly knows another This I perceive in my self for I am in the dark to all the world and my nearest friends behold me but in a cloud those that know me but superficially think less of me than I do of my self those of my neer acquaintance think more God who truly knows me knows that I am nothing for he only beholds me and all the world who looks not on us through a derived ray or a trajection of a sensible species but beholds the substance without the helps of accidents and the forms of things as we their operations Further no man can judge another because no man knows himself for we censure others but as they disagree from that humour which we fancy laudible in our selves and commend others but for that wherein they seem to quadrate and consent with us So that in conclusion all is but that we all condem Self-love 'T is the general complaint of these times and perhaps of those past that charity grows cold which I perceive most verified in those which most do manifest the fires and flames of zeal for it is a virtue that best agrees with coldest natures and such as are complexioned for humility But how shall we expect Charity towards others when we are uncharitable to our selves Charity begins at home is the voice of the World yet is every man his greatest enemy and as it were his own Executioner Non occides is the Commandment of God yet scarce observed by any man for I perceive every man is his own Atropos and lends a hand to cut the thred of his own days Cain was not therefore the first Murtherer but Adam who brought in death whereof he beheld the practice and example in his own son Abel and saw that verified in the experience of another which faith could not perswade him in the Theory of himself Sect. 5 There is I think no man that apprehends his own miseries less than my self and no man that so neerly apprehends anothers I could lose an arm without a tear and with few groans methinks be quartered into pieces yet can I weep most seriously at a Play and receive with true passion the counterfeit grief of those known and professed Impostures It is a barbarous part of inhumanity to add unto any afflicted parties misery or indeavour to multiply in any man a passion whose single nature is already above his patience this was the greatest affliction of Job and those oblique expostulations of his Friends a deeper injury than the down-right blows of the Devil It is not the tears of our own eyes only but of our friends also that do exhaust the current of our sorrows which falling into many streams runs more peaceably and is contented with a narrower channel It is an act within the power of charity to translate a passion out of one brest into another and to divide a sorrow almost out of it self for an affliction like a dimension may be so divided as if not indivisible at least to become insensible Now with my friend I desire not to share or participate but to engross his sorrows that by making them mine own I may more easily discuss them for in mine own reason and within my self I can command that which I cannot intreat without my self and within the circle of another I have often thought those noble pairs and examples of friendship not so truly Histories of what had been as fictions of what should be but I now perceive nothing in them but possibilities nor any thing in the Heroick examples of Damon and Pythias Achilles and Patroclus which methinks upon some grounds I could not perform within the narrow compass of my self That a man should lay down his life for his Friend seems strange to vulgar affections and such as confine themselves within that Worldly principle Charity begins at home For my own part I could never remember the relations that I held unto my self nor the respect that I owe unto my own nature in the cause of God my Country and my Friends Next to these three I do embrace my self I confess I do not observe that order that the Schools ordain our affections to love our Parents Wives Children and then our Friends for excepting the injunctions of Religior I do not find in my self such a necessary and indissoluble Sympathy to all those of my blood I hope I do not break the fifth Commandment if I conceive I may love my friend before the nearest of my blood even those to whom I owe the principles of life I never yet cast a true affection on a woman but I have loved my friend as I do virtue my soul my God From hence me thinks I do conceive how God loves man what happiness there is in the love of God Omitting all other there are three most mystical unions two natures in one person three persons in one nature one soul in two bodies For though indeed they be really divided yet are they so united as they seem but one and make rather a duality than two distinct souls Sect. 6 There are wonders in true affection it is a body of Enigma 's mysteries and riddles wherein two so become one as they both become two I love my friend before my self and yet methinks I do not love him enough some few months hence my multiplied affection will make me believe I have not loved him at all when I am from him I am dead till I be with him when I am with him I am not satisfied but
sunt inter Haereticos deputandi Aug. cont Manich. 24. qu. 3. Sect. 9 Pag. 16 The deepest mysteries that ours contains have not only been illustrated but maintained by Syllogism and the Rule of Reason and since this Book was written by Mr. White in his Institutiones Sacrae And when they have seen the Red Sea doubt not of the Miracle Those that have seen it have been better informed than Sir Henry Blount was for he tells us That he desired to view the passage of Moses into the Red Sea not being above three days journey off but the Jews told him the precise place was not known within less than the space of a days journey along the shore wherefore saith he I left that as too uncertain for any Observation In his Voyage into the Levant Sect. 10 Pag. 19 I had as lieve you tell me that Anima est Angelus hominis est corpus Dei as Entelechia Lux est umbra Dei as actus perspoicui Great variety of opinion there hath been amongst the Ancient Philosophers touching the definition of the Soul Thales his was that it is a Nature without Repose Asclepiades that it is an Exercitation of Sense Hesiod that it is a thing composed of Earth and Water Parmenides holds of Earth and Fire Galen that it is Heat Hippocrates that it is a spirit diffused through the body Some others have held it to be Light Plato saith 't is a Substance moving it self and after him cometh Aristotle whom the Author here reproveth and goeth a degree farther and saith it is Entelechia that is that which naturally makes the body to move But this definition is as rigid as any of the other for this tells us not what the essence origine or nature of the soul is hut only marks an effect of it and therefore signifieth no more than if he had said as the Author's Phrase is that it is Angelus hominis or an Intelligence that moveth man as he supposed those other to do the Heavens Now to come to the definition of Light in which the Author is also unsatisfied with the School of Aristotle he saith It satisfieth him no more to tell him that Lux est actus perspicui than if you should tell him that it is umbra Dei The ground of this definition given by the Peripateticks is taken from a passage in Aristot de anima l. 2. cap. 7. where Aristtotle saith That the colour of the thing seen doth move that which is perspicuum actu i.e. illustratam naturam quae sit in aere aliove corpore transparente and that that in regard of its continuation to the eye moveth the eye and by its help the internal sensorium and that so vision is perform'd Now as it is true that the Sectators of Aristotle are too blame by fastening up on-him by occasion of this passage that he meant that those things that made this impress upon the Organs are meer accidents and have nothing of substance which is more than ever he meant and cannot be maintained without violence to Reason and his own Principles so for Aristotle himself no man is beholden to him for any Science acquir'd by this definition for what is any man the near for his telling him that Colour admitting it to be a body as indeed it is and in that place he doth not deny doth move actu perspicuum when as the perspicuity is in relation to the eye and he doth not say how it comes to be perspicuous which is the thing enquired after but gives it that denomination before the eye hath perform'd its office so that if he had said it had been umbra Dei it would have been as intelligible as what he hath said He that would be satisfied how Vision is perform'd let him see Mr. Hobbs in Tract de nat human cap. 2. For God had not caused it to rain upon the Earth St. Aug. de Genes ad literam cap. 5. 6. salves that expression from any inconvenience but the Author in Pseudodox Epidemic l. 7. cap. 1. shews that we have no reason to be confident that this fruit was an Apple I believe that the Serpent if we shall literally understand it from his proper form and figure made his motion on his belly before the curse Yet the Author himself sheweth in Pseudodox Epidemic lib. 7 cap 1. that the form or kind of this Serpent is not agreed on yet Comestor affirm'd it was a Dragon Eugubinus a Basilisk Delrio a Viper and others a common Snake but of what kind soever it was he sheweth in the same Volume lib. 5. c. 4. that there was no inconvenience that the Temptation should be perform'd in his proper shape I find the tryal of the Pucelage and virginity of Women which God ordained the Jews is very fallible Locus extat Deut. c. 22. the same is affirm'd by Laurentius in his Anatom Whole Nations have escaped the curse of Child-birth which God seems to pronounce upon the whole sex This is attested by Mr. Montaign Les doleurs de l'enfantiment par les medicines pardein mosme estimles grandes quae nous pasons avec tant de Cetemonies ily a des notions entieres qui ne'n fuit mul conte l. 1. des Ess c. 14. Sect. 11 Pag. 21 Who can speak of Eternity without a Soloecism or think thereof without an Extasie Time we may comprehend c. Touching the difference betwixt Eternity and Time there have been great disputes amongst Philosophers some affirming it to be no more than duration perpetual consisting of parts and others to which opinion it appears by what follows in this Section the Author adheres affirmed to use the Author's phrase that it hath no distinction of Tenses but is according to Boetius lib. 5. consol pros 6. his definition interminabilis vitae tota simul perfecta possessio For me Non nostrum est tantas componere lites I shall only observe what each of them hath to say against the other Say those of the first opinion against those that follow Boetius his definition That definition was taken by Boetius out of Plato's Timaeus and is otherwise applyed though hot by Boetius yet by those that follow him than ever Plato intended it for he did not take it in the Abstract but in the Concrete for an eternal thing a Divine substance by which he meant God or his Anima mundi and this he did to the intent to establish this truth That no mutation can befal the Divine Majesty as it doth to things subject to generation and corruption and that Plato there intended not to define or describe any species of duration and they say that it is impossible to understand any such species of duration that is according to the Author's expression but one permanent point Now that which those that follow Boetius urge against the other definition is they say it doth not at all difference Eternity from the nature of Time for they say if it be composed
Boetius Possidonius Diogenes Babylonius and Zeno Sidonius who were Stoiques and yet did not think the World should be destroyed by fire nor yet by any other means Sect. 46 Pag. 99 How shall we interpret Elias 6000 years c. Lanctant is very positive that the World should last but 6000 years but his reason for it is somewhat strange thus it is Quoniam sex diebus cuncta Dei opera perfecta sunt per secula sex i. e. annorum sex millia manere in hoc statu mundum necesse est De Divino praemio cap. 14. Sect. 47 Pag. 101 Ipsa sui pretium virtus sibi is but a cold principle It is a Stoical principle Quaeris enim aliquid supra summum interrogas quid petam extra virtutem ipsam Nihil enim habet melius pretium sui est Senec. de vit beat c. 9. That honest artifice of Seneca What that artifice was is to be seen in Senec. l. 1. Ep. Ep. 11. Aliquis vir bonus nobis eligendus est semper ante oculos habendus ut sic tanquam illo spectante vivamus omnia tanquam illo vidente faciamus Et Paulo post Elige itaque Catonem si hic videtur tibi nimis rigidus elige remissioris animi virum Loelium c. which though as the Author saith it be an honest Artifice yet cannot I but commend the party and prefer the direction of him who ever he were who in the Margin of my Seneca over against those words wrote these Quin Deo potius qui semper omnibus omnia agentibus non tanquam sed reipsa adest videt ac etiam ut Testis vindex punitor est malè agentis I have tryed if I could reach that great Resolution of his that is of Seneca to be honest without a thought of Heaven or Hell Seneca brags he could do this in these words Si sâ—irem deos peccata ignoscituros homines ignoraturos adhuc propter vilitatem peccati peccare erubescerem Credat Judaeus appella non ego And Atheists have been the onely Philosophers That is if nothing remain after this life St. Aug. was of this opinion Disputabam Epicurum accepturum fuisse palmam in animo meo nisi ego credidissem post mortem restare animae vitam c. Aug. l. 6. conf cap. 16. Sect. 48 Pag. 104 God by a powerful voice shall command them back into their proper shapes So Minutius Caeterum quis tam stultus est aut brutus ut audeat repugnare hominem à Deo ut primum potuit fingi ita posse denuo reformari nihil esse post obitum ante ortum nihil fuisse sicut de nihilo nasci licuit ita de nihilo licere reparari Porro difficilius est id quod sit incipere quod quam id quod fuerit iterare Tu perire Deo credis si quid nostris oculis hebetibus subtrahitur Corpus omne sive arescit in pulverem sive in humorem solvitur vel in cinerem comprimitur vel in nidorem tenuatur subducitur nobis sed Deo elementorum in custodi inseruntur in Octav. Vide Grot. de veritate Relig Christian ubi lib. 2. solvit objectionem quod dissoluta corpora restitui nequeunt Sect. 50 Pag. 109 Or conceive a flame that can either prey upon or purifie the substance of a soul Upon this ground Psellus lib. 1. de energia Daemonum c. 7. holds That Angels have bodies though he grants them to be as pure or more pure than Air is otherwise he could not apprehend how they should be tormented in Hell and it may be upon this ground it was that the Author fell into the error of the Arabians mentioned by him Sect. 7. Sect. 51 Pag. 112 There are as many Hells as Anax agoras conceited Worlds I assure my self that this is false printed and that instead of Anaxagoras it should be Anaxarchus for Anaxagoras is reckon'd amongst those Philosophers that maintain'd a Unity of the World but Anaxarchus according to the opinion of Epicurus held there were infinite Worlds This is he that caus'd Alexander to weep by telling him there were infinite Worlds whereby Alexander it seems was brought out of opinion of his Geography who before that time thought there remained nothing or not much beyond his Conquests Sect. 54 Pag. 11 It is hard to place those Souls in Hell Lactantius is alike charitably disposed towards those Non sum equidem tam iniquus ut eos putem divinare debuisse ut veritatem per seipsos invenirent quod fieri ego non posse confiteor sed hoc ab eis exigo quod ratione ipsa praestare potuerunt Lactant. de orig error c. 3. which is the very same with Sir Digbie's expression in his Observations on this place I make no doubt at all saith he but if any follow'd in the whole tenour of their lives the dictaments of right reason but that their journey was secure to Heaven Sect. 55 Pag. 118 Aristotle transgress'd the Rule of his own Ethicks And so they did all as Lactantius hath observed at large Aristotle is said to have been guilty of great vanity in his Clothes of Incontinency of Unfaithfulness to his Master Alexander c. But 't is to wonder in him if our great Seneca be also guilty whom truely notwithstanding St. Jerome would have him inserted into the Catalogue of Saints yet I think he as little deserv'd it as many of the Heathens who did not say so well as he did for I do not think any of them lived worse to trace him a little In the time of the Emperour Claudius we find he was banish'd for suspicion of incontinency with Julia the daughter of Germanicus If it be said that this proceeded meerly from the spight of Messalina and that Lipsius did not complement with him in that kind Apostrophe Non expetit in te haec culpa O Romani nominis sapientiae magnae Sol. Not. in Tacit. why then did she not cause him to be put to death as well as she did the other who was her Husband's Niece This for certain whatever his life were he had paginam lascivam as may appear by what he hath written de Speculorum usu l. 1. Nat. Qu. cap. 16. Which admitting it may in a Poet yet how it should be excus'd in a Philosopher I know not To look upon him in his exile we find that then he wrote his Epistle De Consolat to Polybius Claudius his creature as honest a man as Pallas or Narcissus and therein he extols him and the Emperour to the Skies in which he did grosly prevaricate and lost much of his reputation by seeking a discharge of his Exile by so sordid a means Upon Claudius his marriage with Agrippina he was recall'd from Banishment by her means and made Praetor then he forgets the Emperour having no need of him labours all he can to depress him and the hopeful Britannicus and procured his Pupil Nero
Adage was cross'd 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 i. e. novacula in cotem Vid. Erasm Chiliad It is not meer Zeal to Learning or devotion to the Muses that wiser Princes patronize the Arts c. but a desire to have their names eterniz'd by the memory of their Writings There is a great Scholar who took the boldness to tell a Prince so much Est enim bonorum principum cum viris eruditis tacita quaedam naturalisque Societas ut alteri ab alteris illustrentur ac dum sibi mutuò suffragantur gloria principibus doctis authoritas concilietur Politian Ep. Ludovic Sfort. quae extat lib. 11. Ep. ep 1. And to this Opinion astipulates a Countryman of our own whose words are these Ignotius esset Lucilius nisi eum Epistolae Senecae illustrarent Laudibus Caesareis plus Virgilius Varus Lucanusque adjecerunt quam immensum illud aerarium quo Vrbem Orbem spoliavit Nemo prudentiam Ithaci aut Pelidae vires agnosceret nisi eas Homerus divino publicasset ingenio unde nihil mihi videtur consultius viro ad gloriam properanti fidelium favore Scriptorum Joan. Sarisb Polycrat l. 8. c. 14. And that Princes are as much beholding to the Poets pens as their own Swords Horace tells Censorinus with great confidence Od. 8. l. 4. Non incisa notis c. Sect. 4 Pag. 140 St. Paul that calls the Cretians Lyars doth it but indirectly and upon quotation of one of their own Poets That is Epimenides the place is Tit. 1. v. 12. where Paul useth this verse taken out of Epimenides 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 It is as bloody a thought in one way as Nero 's was in another For by a word we wound a thousand I suppose he alludes to that passage in Sueton. in the life of Nero where he relates that a certain person upon a time spoke in his hearing these words 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 i. e. When I am dead let Earth be mingled with Fire Whereupon the Emperour uttered these words 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 i. e. Yea whilst I live there by one word he express'd a cruel thought which I think is the thing he meant this is more cruel than the wish of Caligula that the people of Rome had but one Neck that he might destroy them all at a blow Sect. 6 Pag. 147 I cannot believe the story of the Italian c. It is reported that a certain Italian having met with one that had highly provoked him put a Ponyard to his breast and unless he would blaspheme God told him he would kill him which the other doing to save his life the Italian presently kill'd him to the intent he might be damned having no time of Repentance I have no sins that want a Name The Author in cap. ult lib. ult Pseudodox speaking of the Act of carnality exercised by the Egyptian Pollinctors with the dead carcasses saith we want a name for this wherein neither Petronius nor Martial can relieve us therefore I conceive the Author here means a venereal sin This was the Temper of that Leacher that carnal'd with a Statua The Latine Annotator upon this hath these words Romae refertur de Hispano quodam But certainly the Author means the Statue of Venus Gnidia made by Praxiteles of which a certain young man became so enamoured that Pliny relates Ferunt amore captum cum delituisset noctu simulachro cohaesisse ejusque cupiditatis esse indicem maculum Lucian also has the story in his Dialog Amores And the constitution of Nero in his Spintrian recreations The Author doth not mean the last Nero but Tiberius the Emperour whose name was Nero too of whom Sueton. Secessu verò Capreensi etiam sellariam excogitavit sedem arcanarum libidinum in quam undique conquisiti puellarum exoletorum greges monstrosique concubitus repertores quos spintrias appellabat triplici serie connexi invicem incestarent se coram ipso ut adspectu deficientes libidines excitaret Suet. in Tib. 43. Sect. 8 Pag. 151 I have seen a Grammarian toure and plume himself over a single line in Horace and shew more pride c. Movent mihi stomachum Grammatistae quidam qui cum duas tenuerint vocabulorum origines ita se ostentant ita venditant ita circumferunt jactabundi ut prae ipsis pro nihilo habendos Philosophos arbitrentur Picus Mirand in Ep. ad HermolBarb quae extat lib. onon Epist Politian Garsio quisque duas postquam scit jungere partes Sic stat sic loquitur velut omnes noverit artes I cannot think that Homer pin'd away upon the Riddle of the Fishermen The History out of Plutarch is thus Sailing from Thebes to the Island Ion being landed and set down upon the shore there happen'd certain Fishermen to pass by him and he asking them what they had taken they made him this Enigmatical answer That what they had taken they had left behind them and what they had not taken they had with them meaning that because they could take no Fish they went to loose themselves and that all which they had taken they had killed and left behind them and all which they had not taken they had with them in their clothes and that Homer being struck with a deep sadness because he could not interpret this pin'd away and at last dyed Pliny alludes to this Riddle in his Ep. to his Friend Fuscus where giving an account of spending his time in the Country he tells him Venor aliquando sed non sine pugillaribus ut quamvis nihil ceperim non nihil referam Plin. Ep. lib. 9. Ep. 36. Or that Aristot did ever drown himself upon the flux or reflux of Euripus Laertius reports that Aristotle dyed of a disease at 63 years of age For this and the last see the Author in Pseudodox Aristotle doth but instruct us as Plato did him to confute himself In the matter of Idea's Eternity of the World c. Sect. 9 Pag. 154 I could be content that we might procreate like trees without conjunction or that there were any way to perpetuate the World without this trivial and vulgar way of Coition It is the foolishest act a wise man commits in all his life There was a Physitian long before the Author that was of the same opinion Hippocrates for which vide Agel l. 19. Noct. Attic. c. 2. And so of late time was Paracelsus who did undertake to prescribe a way for the generation of a man without coition Vide Campanel de sensu rerum in Append. ad cap. 19. l. 4. Monsieur Montaignes words on this subject are worth the reading these they are Je trouve apres tout que l'amour n'st autre chose que la faim de cette jouyssance considerant maintesfois ridicule titillation de se plaiser par cu il nous tient les absurdes movements escervelez estourdis dequoy il agit Zenon Cratippus ceste rage indiscrete ce visage