being now here next now in the furthest corner of the world without taking point by point the room that lyes between and this power they have too as being not body We say then again That motion a thing as truly not body as ghost is may happily upon that score be so far quickned by ghost at least or so high wrought up in its own kind as to hale the thing stirr'd in the utmost speed beyond the steppings of atome by atome after its kind So a body having bequeath'd it one degree of sturt or yerk in one now of time and hitching thereupon one atome of room may upon taking in ten or twenty degrees of the same in the next sturt to many atoms in length Now it being as easie for a body to take in ten or twenty degrees of starting in one now as to take in one Start or swiftness not being body in it self cannot be measured as intended in degrees by that which measures body as extended in parts it seems not to bear very hard upon reason that it should also undergo the brunt of them as of one As then the effect of one taken in in one now was a start of one atome of room in one now of time the taking in of twenty such degrees in such one now should also beget a skip of twenty such atoms in one such now Though the foul seems to have much the better of it as to the body while in it as doing things often against the grain of the body and more like it self when the body cannot do many things against the souls will nor any against its kind though the things be never so friendly to body as body Yet this sway that the soul has over the body will not help us out in the shewing how body may be carried out to the doing beyond it self as such when rous'd up by a thing not body which has gotten the mastery of it For the souls business in the wagon or vehicle of the body is not to ride it full speed but to breath it fair and soft rather to ride in state than to ride post ennobling the body by its curious draughts and trails of enlivening sprightlinesses not jading it in the great road of bare motion which other stirr'd bodies are wayfaring in That therefore whence I think a little light will dawn towards us in these mists is this to wit Some instance of Gods impowering ghost either by bare leave or by biding to boot to run body so far off its legs as to hurry it on nearer the pace of ghost than that of it self yet without insouling or inlivening of it Thus if any faith may be had to story we have tales enough to make a Thomas believe that spirits have brought bodies into a room in the twinkling of an eye and by as clever a slight wafted them away in another and that they have in a bodily shape told some as at this now what is done at a place scores or hundreds of miles off which upon search have been found to have been done there as near as could be driven but the moment before it was spoken yonder Of which to name one the Devil of Mascon falls not much short whether you look upon the feats done or the witness of the story that speaks them so But to be sure one who could never mistake himself nor mistel us has said flatly that our Blessed Lord was so suddenly wafted into the midst of his Disciples Luke 24. 36. that of above 22 eyes none could see him coming thither till they beheld him standing there And though they might well believe their eyes while he stood that it was a body by standing there yet 't is said they were frighted to think that it must be a spirit in its coming thither they being no more able to ken the body through the glancing of the spirit that brought it than they could the speed of a spirits glancing even without body And as his coming was thus over-quick to be seen by those eyes that can see from earth to heaven in a moment so his going away from two a little before was of the same kind v. 31 He vanisht out of their sight not that the body turn'd to a nothingness but to an unseenness 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 And such to end was his farewel While he blessed them he parted and was carried up 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the very blessing he was carried It was so soon upon it that the Spirit of God did not think meet to say it was after it Though indeed we read from one Gospeller That after the Lord had spoken he was received up yet he does not say it was after these words of blessing but might be only after what he was speaking of foregoing Or if he did take in this he does not say after but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which may be at among or about there as well as it must be elsewhere Luk. 24. 5. And if it be said that our Lords Body was a spiritual body we must also say that if it was not true body as well as spiritual it could not be truly a spiritual body What we would gather hence is this That if a body whilst a body may be so oversway'd by ghost within it as to brush through many atoms of room in fewer nows of time it may happily be that that unbodily thing call'd motion without ghost may be so far intended beyond what the body in which 't is is extended as to bring it to a like swiftness So that if all the motion with which God at first quickned the world were made over to one small body just holding way with time in its motion and all the rest at a dead stilness time all the while holding on its even by-run 't is not methinks altogether unlikely but that this body which ran even a breast with time from the motion which it had before should now give time the go-by with what it has gotten since and is over-glutted with But to break off from this so great a stamme to the mind rather wishing we could give more light in it than blissing our selves in that already given We go on to the following which may seem to have beset the mind as narrowly with wrack and night as any of the foregoing We have it with the former father'd upon Empiricus thus Take a line of nine points and imagine two least bodies pacing with even speed from the two ends to the middle that they may meet there 't is needful that the fifth or middle point should be halv'd between them there being no reason why one should engross the whole more than the other when yet the places and bodies mov'd in them are for-taken to be altogether without parts To which by way of fore-runner we ananswer That if the Argument be of any force at all it will hold as strongly against time's being made up of nows as body's being
to wash away his eye-sight what kind of thing he thought whiteness to be he answered warily That sure it must be a bright lightsom colour and what blackness was he said That must be a dark colour which two took in all that he had to say of colours and that little too was utter'd from the glimmerings of sight in him he having so much of the Moles eye that if he held his face to the South and lookt up he would say whether it were day or night And if all our eyes had been of that make we should have known no more than those two nor no more of them neither And what we do feel of them as we are sets so close to us as we are such or such that whatever wants the tools that we have shall never feel the things that we feel the things being wholly begotten between the organ and the object the tool and that it works upon Now God having no such bodily organs by which to take in things secundum habitudines nostri and such an have-likeness being as needful on the behalf of the organ and object both for the begetting of a sensation or feeling as the make of such a screw is to wind in to such another or the mutual fitnesses and yernings of kind are to the begetting of the like in those that do so 't is clear he can no more be brought down to do the one than to that other So that that which to us is World seen or unseen to him is Being life might springsomness self-entwining law of doing seed teemingness and such like Thus day and night light and darkness are both alike to him 1000 years as one day 1000 years to come as yesterday when it is past past and to come as now impenetrable or unthroughfaresom as penetrable body as emptiness hot cold wet dry hard soft cleavesom and the like nothing at all no more than they would be to our own souls out of the body heaven and earth not far and wide asunder nor to our own thoughts that can be now in heaven and the next now on earth lastly all bodiship with those its belongers which make it sensible unto us coming not at all into that idea that God Almighty frames of them any more than his idea of them comes into our feeling and his idea or likeness of them being nearer to that analogy they would bear to us were we all ghost inasmuch as he is so it follows that there are no such things as we may think belonging to extended bodies sundred from our ghesses at them secundum analogiam hominis or the business they have to do one with another secundum analogiam sui bodies being one thing to us and themselves another thing to God and Ghost So the wide thick all-to-be deckt heap of visible beings may be swallowed up in the altogetherness of Gods All-fillingness as well as the long chain of ages from the worlds first to its last in the only one now of his Everlastingness And this ends the second Head wherein we were to shew How the Worlds vastness behaves it self towards Gods Immensity In both which having seen what the Worlds lastingness and roomth is as it concerns that boundless Being which is neither timesom nor roomthy and vvhat its bulk is to the same being as immense to those ghostly beings vvhich though they are in time are not yet in any room where 't is found that time has no length but as it looks to timesom beings nor has bulk vvideness or thickness but as it stands to body we have perhaps open'd a fair gap for the better knovving vvhat the World is unto our selves vvho as vve are men and made up of ghost and body both are even a part of it and take up time and room in it CHAP. IV. THe dealing or business that is betvveen body and body being as real as that betvveen body and ghost and body and us vvho are body and ghost mingled it being as sure that one body cannot penetrate another as 't is that a ghost can that the vvhole throng of bodies and each one in it is extended as that a ghost is not so and that a piece of body may be cloven asunder or stirred so and so as 't is that a ghost can be neither like it having seen vvhat body is to God and Ghost it seems novv as much behoving us to sift out vvhat body is to body and us In the doing of vvhich vve shall endeavour to shevv hovv far body or the vvorld of bodies may be stretched out hovv small a piece of body may be crumbled hovv svvift or hovv slovv either may be moved And also because vve find the stuff of body of a more flitting kind than the ground-vvork or substance of ghost Hovv long it has or might have already been and hovv long it does or may last And forasmuch as body may happily shift its being as vvell as its seat Whether there may not have been some bodies or vvorlds heretofore vvhich novv are not And last of all vvhilst one may be a great vvay off from another Whether some are not so far from our place as to be far also from the vvorld in vvhich vve are placed Of each of these as they vvill best fall in vvith that train of thoughts vvhich vve have framed about them vvithout aiming at any better rangement for them The first Head about extension in the whole or the utmost reach of bodies will fall into these things to wit Whether the world be boundless or bounded And if bounded what 't is that bounds it whether body or emptiness And if either Whether they be bounded or not which shall be likewise set down in somewhat a mingled way as they may lucken most readily to come into mind Having erewhile said That manifold lengths of time coming one after other could never make out an Eternity or a being boundless in abiding so here we say That the cleavesom bitlings of body heapt one upon another can never make up an Immensity or a being boundless in its bulk somness but now the world is all heapt up of such little bits therefore we gather thence that it cannot be boundless in its bulk The reason of the thing to me is clear thus Every thing that may be riven apieces may have its pieces told and every tally by which we tell things must be either even or odd every one that is even may have one put to it to make it odd every one that is odd may have one put to it to make it even and every one that may have one put to it is not infinite It follows then that if there be no parts but may be numbred and no number but must be finite that whatever is made up of parts is finite too its parts being told by a finite tally Now as to a number beyond the numbers of Arithemetick I must be so bold with it for once as to ask
Ans It would and it would not and either according as you make the selvedge If you make it as round as a Mathematical circle it would not fly for arrow standing in a streight line from the innermost or centre to the selvedge and there being no more reason why it should warp to the right hand than to the left why this way rather than that it must needs stir no way but stick with its head at the selvedge though it has all the force given it that strong-bow and arm-strong can make together But the shapes of nature being of another kind of make than those of handy-works 't is very likely that the roundness of the world if yet it be round is somewhat otherwise than a true Geometrick circle As we see the ring of the Earth a far less Ball ends not in lines evenly drawn from the centre thither but is bounded with hills and dales and both earth and water with manifold unevennesses much more then are we to ghess such in the bigger roundle of the world Whence 't is that the arrow may have by some lucky rising or other a Bias given it this way or that way as a Coach may be so tickly set upon the surface of the earth as to give it self a trundling one way or other So then the motion would be as touching the world in a bow or arch of a circle upon the very selvedge of it but as touching the Marks-man in a line streight enough on to the eye For it flying in a line as far off as it can according to the steering that was given it it would be seemingly as streight as it can be at all for the nearer the eye comes to a great thing that is bowing the less bowing it seems When we first make a Ness at Land too it seems more a Ness than when we are less off at Sea but when we are just at shore it seems to lye in a streight line with the rest of the Coast And as we are not aware of that bow which is made by all things darted or shot in the air supposing the whirle of the earth because we our selves are running the same round as the great Galileo has altogether made out so neither do we ken that bow that is made by the wheeling of a Chariot onwards upon the round surface of the earth whether it stirs or stands still but we see it run as much flat-wise or in plano setting aside the little risings and fallings of uneven ground as if the outside of the earth were a shire flat or level Nor could Sir Fra. Drake have ever gather'd from the eye that he sail'd otherwise than in a level when yet he sail'd in a circle round about the earth As then whatsoever moves as much in a flat as it can for the earths rim we reckon to have moved in a flat altogether so whatever flies in as streight a path as the bow of the worlds bigger rim will give leave we if there would count wholly streight And that such seeming streightness would not show sidewise but forwards may be gather'd from hence If I were to look through the earth at an enlightned hole or Well reaching from me to him that sets foot to foot with me on the other side the hole would seem all downwards to me although in it self it were half downwards half upwards As well then may an arrow gliding on the selvedge of the world seem to me there standing all upwards and nothing at all sidewise But to give the objection all the lifts we can Suppose we instead of this Shooter a man leauing his side against the selvedge of the world with his arm down by it Could he spread forth his arm or could he not If he could then he did it in that emptiness which is gainsay'd For we will think him to bear it that way and for the nonce to hinder all other wayes and if it should but upon the shove flie upwards or downwards or otherwise than he aims it he would quickly be aware of it by the change of that posture which it would then have to the rest of his body And if it could not when thus hem'd in be put forth into the emptiness at all What hinders it To this we answer in the first place 'T is hugely questionable to me Whether such a posture may be allow'd as standing with the loadstoneships or magnetisms of the world and the ballancings of a body such as that of mans is For as we see 't is impossible to have the earth in this our roundle otherwise than beneath us so 't is agreeable that we cannot otherwise have the heaven in the world than as to sence above us The thing taken up then grates as much upon the face of Dame Nature as to suppose a man lying along in the open air at level or in a line parallel to the plane of the Horizon But secondly Bating the Objection all this seeming roughness We answer If the man were so laid at the worlds selvedge as to have it on the side of him not above his head his arm hanging by the same side if by a sudden rush of the spirits into it he should give it an heave outwards and from the same inward free spring of motion should keep it from slipping awry then would not the arm stir at all there being no place left for it to stir into it being all one as if he should thrust it against some hard body at rest of too stout a withstanding to yield way or give back If it be further said it must sure flie outwards because 't is lifted that way and there 's nothing to forbid its coming there 't is further answered The knack or contrivance of the Frame of the world forbids it and that is something and something too as powerful to check or bind motion as the way-laying of a gross unweildy body or any thing else that we by sence and trial find enough to stop the career of a body in its swiftest hurry If this answer seems harsh or stretched we shall easily slacken and soften it by a clearer Instance nearer home Suppose we then a bore through the heart or centre of the earth from outside to outside into which let a man be thought falling down when he comes at the centre he falls no further but is as surely stopt there as if the hole were bored no further but had the whole pillar of the earths half-thwart line or semidiameter of even bore to withstand it Now in this Instance it may as well be said there being nothing in the Tube to hinder Why should not the man fall further the air of the Well being all of a make What could not stop him in one place could not in another And indeed if the air upon any score could check the downfal it vvould sooner do it at the top of the earth vvhere the spring of the air belovv vvas stronger though its vveight
as there might be a growing every day more mighty and more wise from everlasting that Being must needs be as infinite in wisdom and mightiness as God himself because as infinite in those two as he is in his everlastingness in which he is no less infinite than in them All that we want now of making the world a God Cap-a-pe or up to the Brim is only this That such a world would be made by God still and not from everlasting of it self as he is But do but put it next into that same boundless roomthiness and abiding whereupon 't is said they would jump into one roomthiness and abiding and which are as much of themselves as God himself is and were and will be for all him from everlasting to everlasting and then I think he will have set before us such a Hoghen moghen Leviathan that that of Holy Job would be but a kind of Spratkin to it ward and the bigger one of Mr. Hobbes would never be enough to make Anchovy-sauce for it Though indeed I cannot think he meant no better yet weighing these things I must needs say He seems to be a setter forth of strange gods and looks as if he had given us Tentamina de Deo for the nonce And for my part if I did but think there were or could be any such thing as springs thus kindly from the seed which he has sown it would give me for ever frolicking on 't again and I should go in fear of my life on 't every day I rise and dream full dradly on 't every night I went to bed For I being at no agreement vvith this same hideous Roomster as to the vvay hovv I should behave my self tovvards it vvhile in it hovv to bespeak its forgiveness after doing amiss or how to know when I have done so it may be while I am thinking how all is well and a coaks a coming I may for ought I know be ramping on the snout of it and so have my harmless mistake paid home by a vile mischance and a sudden too with nothing less than the dreadfulness of a grim nip and a dead-doing gripe And this shall be enough to have spoken to the first part of our fourth Head How far of old the world or body has or might have been The other part is How long it shall or may last The Answer to which must be twofold according to the twofold state of the world to wit That in which 't is and that in which it shall be As to the latter There sticks nothing with me but that the world or body may be as everlasting as the soul For I think 't is as impossible that that which is something should make it self nothing as that that which is nothing should make it self something And when we say the body is dying or timesom the soul deathless or endless we do not mean the body should thereby lose its bodyhood but only its suchness It shall be or may be alwayes body but it never shall be or at least never was it body unshifted but after its kind sending forth and taking in of steams and reeks even all along But as to that plight in which the world now is the May be of its lastingness is not to be gathered from the inwardness of the thing for for ought we know body as now 't is may last as long as body renewed and cleansed by fire as hereafter it shall be But we are altogether to look outward to the will of God who as he hath said to the Sea Thus far shalt thou go and no further in room so has he said to the World Thus far shalt thou go and no further in time The last day and hour of which though no man knows yet I think 't is not much harder to pitch a time beyond which it shall not be than 't is to find out a scantling beyond which the roundle or globe of the earth is not as now For whether we hold That the same body which slept shall rise again that very flesh blood and bones which it lay down as Holy Church seems all along to have believ'd or whether we will have it That the same body because the same Man with body beghosted rises as some of the uppermost seat of Philosophers at this day have themselves thought and wonne upon others to think so too Inasmuch as both of them are acknowledged to be made of stuff already in being it comes all to one As sure as we are that the body shall rise again either way so sure are we that this world shall hold no longer than till all the stuff that is now in the world be wrought up into bodies rising again But then we are not only sure that the body shall rise again but we have the same Word of God for it That it shall do so in the world in which now 't is though not in the world as now 't is but chang'd in its kind of worldhood as that shall be in its kind of bodyhood the new heavens and the new earth being as we think but old bodies new drest So that we are sure too that at the ending of the world there must be stuff enough left unmade up into Manish bodies wherewith to frame a new heaven and new earth without making more of nothing and that this world shall hold no longer than till then Now though the heavens and the earth have dealings with one another yet they do not make over to each other any thing that is bulky or weighty that we can find so whence we may make bold to say over and above That all bodies that are to rise again are made of the same mold or ground that the first was that is taken out of the earthly world not out of the heavenly bodies Whence the world is to last no longer than till the earthly stuff for rifing bodies be spent with leaving enough for an earthly world besides If then we do but know how the earths globe or that of it that lyes fleshward bears it self to the throng of mens bodies made out of it we may at length come at such a bound of time or term of years beyond which we may be sure the world shall not hold out And if we were but well aware how much the innermost bodies enwomb'd in the earth had to do with the making of ours we might come a great deal nearer the business than otherwise we are like to do But setting aside the Excellent Mr. Boyle and Kircher almost all men that have delved into the bowels of the earth to fetch us any tales of under-ground bodies have done it rather to make themselves more rich and wealthy than either themselves or any body else more wise or knowing So that we are much at a loss as to the kind of those things that are hidden there and whether according to the Laws that God has set to himself in drawing one thing out
of another in those Workhousen which we find he has set up the fleshly body of man may at length be carved out of them or Whether there be any little spungholes or crannies by w ch one may soak through to the other Again What we do find at our utmost depths or bores whequarries of stone Mines of metal or layers and veins of barren earths and sapless medlies we can't tell how far they may be tiew'd and drest and mingled so as at length to be be made fit for the food of body to make it wax when well as we see they may for the health of the body to make it well when sick And yet again The sundry unevennesses in the depth of those layers that are made of sapful and growthsom earths lead us into another Wilderness and leave us there For like as sometimes we find Gold a thing that changes us much but feeds us little as fleet as the roots of shrubs in Peru or the West Indies sometimes among the shallow waters that drill between the pebbles in the Falls of Guiny or Africa whilst the Gold Mine at Chremnitz is no less than 160 fathoms deep as we have it from a good Hand upon the place So in like manner those things that feed and biggen us lye in the earths globe at full us uneven depths For while salt a thing that helps as much to live and get life for others too sometimes floats on the top of the Sea and is thickned in the open Beds at the salt-making Marshes of the Isle of Rhe and Xantoign Provence and Messina or digg'd in the Isle of May and fetcht up at the Wiches in England from easie depths We have it for truth That near Eperies is a Salt-Mine 180 fathoms deep and a Sal gemma Mine in Poland no less than 200. Though for the most part it will hold good that you cannot dig many spades in mold or growthsom earth before you come at a dead soyl Supposing then to make short of a thing that may more easily be made long That the wet and dry surface of the earths roundle to the depth of mans height one place with another may be made up into the bodies of mankind and with the well-skill'd F. Taquet That at Dooms-day a less cantling of it than England which we reckon above the thousandth part of the Globe will be enough to hold all the dwellers of it and their children that ever have been or in likelihood may be hereafter till then though the world should last 10000 years Then are we sure this world shall never last beyond a thousand times ten thousand years how much soever it may be guest to fall short of it Which being the whole that we think needful to speak under an Head that has so much room to spread upon and so little of boundedness to winde up in we shall take forth to our last which is CHAP. VII WHether there may not have been some other worlds or world before ours was or Whether there may not yet be some such a great way off while this of ours is Answ A moreness of worlds and a soonerness of this world may alwayes be and often are grounded upon a like way of reasoning that is the boundless and everlasting power and goodness of the Almighty Maker for so pleads the avoucher God being all way boundless in power and goodness and every where withal wherever and whenever he is he may give shew of his power and his goodness there being nothing to hinder his making worlds elsewhere than where this was pitcht or other-while than when this was begun but only time and room imaginary which are nothing and it being good in it self for a world to be the more of them there were or the sooner they began so much the better Now if all this makes any thing for a moreness or more earliness of worlds by the self-same Argument we may hold That this world began sooner than we are told it did begin Which is both impossible to be and wicked to think For the Maker Almighty being everlasting as well as all-filling and ever as well as then boundlesly powerful and good and it being good in it self for this world as much as for any former or other world to be Why might he not 10000 ages before the world was give it its bidding to step forth whilst the sooner it was the better But we must also note That the Argument drawn from Gods unbounded power and goodness as looking towards the behoof of the Creature will ever fall short upon this score For why there is not a full reckoning up of those attributes of his that have to do in the work boundless wisdom and good liking being left out For we are to know That then only infinite power and goodness could make the world when infinite wisdom and good-liking thought it meet that such a being should begin to be Now that was when we read in Moses it did begin to be Whence I think it follows That it could begin no sooner For infinite wisdom pitching upon that time for its beginning chose out the very best time that could be lighted on for its beginning Had it then begun sooner it had been better for it not to have begun so soon But to mistrust boundless wisdom to contrive so that it might have better been contrived is to unmake its boundlesness And to pitch upon two or more best times for a thing to begin in is to pitch upon one of the worser kinds of awkwardness Hence then we gather thus much That as boundless wisdom took in with a moment wherein it was deem'd most meet that Creatures should begin so are we to think again it settled upon a certain number of Creatures which it was best of all should sometimes have beginning For if there were no more reason why God should make the world then when he did make it than why he should make it sooner or later than he did it had nere been made at all any more than it was made sooner or later than it was and if there were no more reason why he made so many beings in the world than why he should make more or fewer he had never made so many at all any more than he made fewer or more than he did make Now the same most trustful witness that tells us when the world began telling us also that it was in the beginning that is if I understand the first word in the Bible 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the beginning of those things that were ever made or before all worlds or the first made bodies were the heaven and the earth which now are and when he tells us what things were then made tells us also that they were made up into a world that was one And the same argument that makes for worlds more or sooner proves also with the same strength that our own world was more or sooner or might have been