Selected quad for the lemma: soul_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
soul_n	body_n	ghost_n	holy_a	10,800	5	5.0214	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A77689	Hydriotaphia, urne-buriall, or, a discourse of the sepulchrall urnes lately found in Norfolk. Together with the garden of Cyrus, or the quincunciall, lozenge, or net-work plantations of the ancients, artificially, naturally, mystically considered. With sundry observations. / By Thomas Browne D. of Physick.	Browne, Thomas, Sir, 1605-1682.	1658 (1658)	Wing B5154; Thomason E1821_3; ESTC R202039	74,321	222

Urnall enterrments and burnt Reliques lye not in fear of worms or to be an heritage for Serpents In carnall sepulture corruptions seem peculiar unto parts and some speak of snakes out of the spinall marrow But while we suppose common wormes in graves 't is not easie to finde any there few in Church-yards above a foot deep fewer or none in Churches though in fresh decayed bodies Teeth bones and hair give the most lasting defiance to corruption In au Hydropicall body ten years buried in a Church-yard we met with a fat concretion where the nitre of the Earth and the salt and lixivious liquor of the body had coagulated large lumps of fat into the consistence of the hardest castle-soap whereof part remaineth with us After a battle with the Persians the Roman Corps decayed in few dayes while the Persian bodies remained dry and uncorrupted Bodies in the same ground do not uniformly dissolve nor bones equally moulder whereof in the opprobrious disease we expect no long duration The body of the Marquesse of Dorset seemed sound and handsomely cereclothed that after seventy eight years was found uncorrupted Common Tombs preserve not beyond powder A firmer consistence and compage of parts might be expected from Arefaction deep buriall or charcoal The greatest Antiquities of mortall bodies may remain in putrified bones whereof though we take not in the pillar of Lots wife or Metamorphosis of Ortelius some may be older then Pyramids in the putrified Reliques of the generall inundation When Alexander opened the Tomb of Cyrus the remaining bones discovered his proportion whereof urnall fragments afford but a bad conjecture and have this disadvantage of grave ●nterrments that they leave us ignorant of most personall discoveries For since bones afford not only rectitude and stability but figure unto the body It is no impossible Physiognomy to conjecture at fleshy appendencies and after what shape the muscles and carnous parts might hang in their full consistences A full-spread Cariola shews a well-shaped horse behinde handsome formed sculls give some analogie of fleshy resemblance A criticall view of bones makes a good distinction of sexes Even colour is not beyond conjecture since it is hard to be deceived in the distinction of Negro's sculls Dante 's Characters are to be found in sculls as well as faces Hercules is not onely known by his foot Other parts make out their comproportious and inferences upon whole or parts And since the dimensions of the head measure the whole body and the sigure thereof gives conjecture of the principall faculties Physiognomy out-lives our selves and ends not in our graves Severe contemplators observing these lasting reliques may think them good monuments of persons past little advantage to future beings And considering that power which subdueth all things unto it self that can resume the scattered Atomes or identifie out of any thing conceive it superfluous to expect a resurrection out of Reliques But the soul subsisting other matter clothed with due accidents may salve the individuality Yet the Saints we observe arose from graves and monuments about the holy City Some think the ancient Patriarchs so earnestly desired to lay their bones in Canaan as hoping to make a part of that Resurrection and though thirty miles from Mount Calvary at least to lie in that Region which should produce the first-fruits of the dead And if according to learned conjecture the bodies of men shall rise where their greatest Reliques remain many are not like to erre in the Topography of their Resurrection though their bones or bodies be after translated by Angels into the field of Ezechiels vision or as some will order it into the Valley of Judgement or Jehosaphat CHAP. IV. CHristians have handsomely glossed the deformity of death by careful consideration of the body and civil rites which take of brutall terminations And though they conceived all reparable by a resurrection cast not off all care of enterrment And since the ashes of Sacrifices burnt upon the Altar of God were carefully carried out by the Priests and deposed in a clean field since they acknowledged their bodies to be the lodging of Christ and temples of the holy Ghost they devolved not all upon the sufficiency of soul existence and therefore with long services and full solemnities concluded their last Exequies wherein to all distinctions the Greek devotion seems most pathetically ceremonious Christian invention hath chiefly driven at Rites which speak hopes of another life and hints of a Resurrection And if the ancient Gentiles held not the immortality of their better part and some subsistence after death in severall rites customes actions and expressions they contradicted their own opinions wherein Democritus went high even to the thought of a resurrection as scoffingly recorded by Pliny What can be more expresse than the expression of Phocyllides Or who would expect from Lucretius a sentence of Ecclesiastes Before Plato could speak the soul had wings in Homer which fell not but flew out of the body into the mansions of the dead who also observed that handsome distinction of Demas and Soma for the body conjoyned to the soul and body separated from it Lucian spoke much truth in jest when he said that part of Hercules which proceeded from Alchmena perished that from Jupiter remained immortall Thus Socrates was content that his friends should bury his body so they would not think they buried Socrates and regarding only his immortall part was indifferent to be burnt or buried From such Considerations Diogenes might contemn Sepulture And being satisfied that the soul could not perish grow carelesse of corporall enterrment The Stoicks who thought the souls of wise men had their habitation about the moon might make slight account of subterraneous deposition whereas the Pythagorians and transcorporating Philosophers who were to be often buried held great care of their enterrment And the Platonicks rejected not a due care of the grave though they put their ashes to unreasonable expectations in their tedious term of return and long set revolution Men have lost their reason in nothing so much as their religion wherein stones and clouts make Martyrs and since the religion of one seems madnesse unto another to afford an account or rationall of old Rites requires no rigid Reader That they kindled the pyre aversly or turning their face from it was an handsome Symbole of unwilling ministration That they washed their bones with wine and milk that the mother wrapt them in Linnen and dryed them in her bosome the first fostering part and place of their nourishment That they opened their eyes towards heaven before they kindled the fire as the place of their hopes or originall were no improper Ceremonies Their last valediction thrice uttered by the attendants was also very solemn and somewhat answered by Christians who thought it too little if they threw not the earth thrice upon the enterred body That in strewing their Tombs the Romans affected the

Rose the Greeks Amaranthus and myrtle that the Funerall pyre consisted of sweet fuell Cypresse Firre Larix Yewe and Trees perpetually verdant lay silent expressions of their surviving hopes Wherein Christians which deck their Coffins with Bays have found a more elegant Embleme For that he seeming dead will restore it self from the root and its dry and exuccous leaves resume their verdure again which if we mistake not we have also observed in fures Whether the planting of yewe in Churchyards hold not its originall from ancient Funerall rites or as an Embleme of Resurrection from its perpetual verdure may also admit conjecture They made use of Musick to excite or quiet the affections of their friends according to different harmonies But the secret and symbolicall hint was the harmonical nature of the soul which delivered from the body went again to enjoy the primitive harmony of heaven from whence it first descended which according to its progresse traced by antiquity came down by Cancer and ascended by Capricornus They burnt not children before their teeth appeared as apprehending their bodies too tender a morsell for fire and that their gristly bones would scarce leave separable reliques after the pyrall combustion That they kindled not fire in their houses for some dayes after was a strict memoriall of the late afflicting fire And mourning without hope they had an happy fraud against excessive lamentation by a common opinion that deep forrows disturbed their ghosts That they buried their dead on their backs or in a supine position seems agreeable unto profound sleep and common posture of dying contrary to the most naturall way of birth Nor unlike our pendulous posture in the doubtfull state of the womb Diogenes was singular who preferred a prone situation in the grave and some Christians like neither who decline the figure of rest and make choice of an erect posture That they carried them out of the world with their feet forward not inconsonant unto reason As contrary unto the native posture of man and his production first into it And also agreeable unto their opinions while they bid adieu unto the world not to look again upon it whereas Mahometans who think to return to a delightfull life again are carried forth with their heads forward and looking toward their houses They closed their eyes as parts which first die or first discover the sad effects of death But their iterated clamations to excitate their dying or dead friends or revoke them unto life again was a vanity of affection as not presumably ignorant of the criticall tests of death by apposition of feathers glasses and reflexion of figures which dead eyes represent not which however not strictly verifiable in fresh and warm cadavers could hardly elude the test in corps of four or five dayes That they suck'd in the last breath of their expiring friends was surely a practice of no medicall institution but a loose opinion that the soul passed out that way and a fondnesse of affection from some Pythagoricall foundation that the spirit of one body passed into another which they wished might be their own That they powred oyle upon the pyre was a tolerable practise while the intention rested in facilitating the accension But to place good Omens in the quick and speedy burning to sacrifice unto the windes for a dispatch in this office was a low form of superstition The Archimime or Jester attending the Funerall train and imitating the speeches gesture and manners of the deceased was too light for such solemnities contradicting their Funerall Orations and dolefull rites of the grave That they buried a peece of money with them as a Fee of the Elysian Ferriman was a practise full of folly But the ancient custome of placing coynes in considerable Urnes and the present practise of burying medals in the Noble Foundations of Europe are laudable wayes of historicall discoveries in actions persons Chronologies and posterity will applaud them We examine not the old Laws of Sepulture exempting certain persons from buriall or burning But hereby we apprehend that these were not the bones of persons Planet-struck or burnt with fire from Heaven No Reliques of Traitors to their Countrey Self-killers or Sacrilegious Malefactors Persons in old apprehension unworthy of the earth condemned unto the Tartara's of Hell and bottomlesse pit of Plato from whence there was no redemption Nor were only many customes questionable in order to their Obsequies but also sundry practises fictions and conceptions discordant or obscure of their state and future beings whether unto eight or ten bodies of men to adde one of a woman as being more inflammable and unctuously constituted for the better pyrall combustion were any rationall practise Or whether the complaint of Perianders Wife be tolerable that wanting her Funerall burning she suffered intolerable cold in Hell according to the constitution of the infernall house of Plato wherein cold makes a great part of their tortures it cannot passe without some question Why the Female Ghosts appear unto Vlysses before the Heroes and masculine spirits Why the Psyche or soul of Tiresias is of the masculine gender who being blinde on earth sees more then all the rest in hell Why the Funerall Suppers consisted of Egges Beans Smallage and Lettuce since the dead are made to eat Asphodels about the Elyzian medows Why since there is no Sacrifice acceptable nor any propitiation for the Covenant of the grave men set up the Deity of Morta and fruitlesly adored Divinities without ears it cannot escape some doubt The dead seem all alive in the humane Hades of Homer yet cannot well speak prophesie or know the living except they drink bloud wherein is the life of man And therefore the souls of Penelope's Paramours conducted by Mercury chirped like bats and those which followed Hercules made a noise but like a flock of birds The departed spirits know things past and to come yet are ignorant of things present Agamemnon foretels what should happen unto Vlysses yet ignorantly enquires what is become of his own Son The Ghosts are afraid of swords in Homer yet Sybilla tels Aeneas in Virgil the thin habit of spirits was beyond the force of weapons The spirits put off their malice with their bodies and Caesar and Pompey accord in Latine Hell yet Ajax in Homer endures not a conference with Vlysses And Deiphobus appears all mangled in Virgils Ghosts yet we meet with perfect shadows among the wounded ghosts of Homer Since Charon in Lucian applauds his condition among the dead whether it be handsomely said of Achilles that living contemner of death that he had rather be a Plowmans servant then Emperour of the dead How Hercules his soul is in hell and yet in heaven and Julius his soul in a Starre yet seen by Aeneas in hell except the Ghosts were but Images and shadows of the soul received in higher mansions according to the ancient division of body soul and image or simulachrum of them both The

quenching the fire with wine Manlius the Consul burnt the body of his Son Numa by speciall clause of his Will was not burnt but buried And R●mus was solemnly buried according to the desoription of Ovid Cornelius Sylla was not the first whose body was burned in Rome but of the Cornelian Family which being indifferently not frequently used before from that time spread and became the prevalent practice Not totally pursued in the highest runne of Cremation For when even Crows were funerally burnt Poppaea the Wife of Nero found a peculiar grave enterment Now as all customes were founded upon some bottome of Reason so there wanted not grounds for this according to feverall apprehensions of the most rationall dissolution Some being of the opinion of Thales that water was the originall of all things thought it most equall to submit unto the principle of putrefaction and conclude in a moist relentment Others conceived it most natural to end in fire as due unto the master principle in the composition according to the doctrine of Heraclitus And therefore heaped up large piles more actively to waft them toward that Element whereby they also declined a visible degeneration into worms and left a lasting parcell of their composition Some apprehended a purifying virtue in fire refining the grosser commixture and firing out the Aethereall particles so deeply immersed in it And such as by tradition or rationall conjecture held any hint of the finall pyre of all things or that this Element at last must be too hard for all the rest might conceive most nanaturally of the fiery dissolution Others pretending no natural grounds politickly declined the malice of enemies upon their buried bodies Which consideration led Sylla unto this practise who having thus served the body of Marius could not but fear a retaliation upon his own entertained after in the Civill wars and revengeful contentions of Rome But as many Nations embraced and many left it indifferent so others too much affected or strictly declined this practice The Indian Brachmans seemed too great friends unto fire who burnt themselves alive and thought it the noblest way to end their dayes in fire according to the expression of the Indian burning himself at Athens in his last words upon the pyre unto the amazed spectators Thus I make my selfe Immortall But the Chaldeans the great Idolaters of fire abhorred the burning of their carcasses as a pollution of that Deity The Persian Magi declined it upon the like scruple and being only sollicitous about their bones exposed their flesh to the prey of Birds and Dogges And the Persees now in India which expose their bodies unto Vultures and endure not so much as feretra or Beers of Wood the proper Fuell of fire are led on with such niceties But whether the ancient Germans who burned their dead held any such fear to pollute their Deity of Herthus or the earth we have no Authentick conjecture The Aegyptians were afraid of fire not as a Deity but a devouring Element mercilesly consuming their bodies and leaving too little of them and therefore by precious Embalments depositure in dry earths or handsome inclosure in glasses contrived the notablest wayes of integrall conservation And from such Aegyptian scruples imbibed by Pythagoras it may be conjectured that Numa and the Pythagoricall Sect first waved the fiery solution The Scythians who swore by winde and sword that is by life and death were so farre from burning their bodies that they declined all interrment and made their graves in the ayr And the Ichthyophagi or fish-eating Nations about Aegypt affected the Sea for their grave Thereby declining visible corruption and restoring the debt of their bodies Whereas the old Heroes in Homer dreaded nothing more than water or drowning probably upon the old opinion of the fiery substance of the soul only extinguishable by that Element And therefore the Poet emphatically implieth the totall destruction in this kinde of death which happened to Ajax Oileus The old Balearians had a peculiar mode for they used great Urnes and much wood but no fire in their burials while they bruised the flesh and bones of the dead crowded them into Urnes and laid heapes of wood upon them And the Chinois without cremation or urnall interrment of their bodies make use of trees and much burning while they plant a Pine-tree by their grave and burn great numbers of printed draughts of slaves and horses over it civilly content with their companies in effigie which barbarous Nations exact unto reality Christians abhorred this way of obsequies and though they stickt not to give their bodies to be burnt in their lives detested that mode after death affecting rather a depositure than absumption and properly submitting unto the sentence of God to return not unto ashes but unto dust againe conformable unto the practice of the Patriarchs the interrment of our Saviour of Peter Paul and the ancient Martyrs And so farre at last declining promiscuous enterrment with Pagans that some have sussered Ecclesiastical censures for making no scruple thereof The Musselman beleevers will never admit this fiery resolution For they hold a present trial from their black and white Angels in the grave which they must have made so hollow that they may rise upon their knees The Jewish Nation though they entertained the old way of inhumation yet sometimes admitted this practice For the men of Jabesh burnt the body of Saul And by no prohibited practice to avoid contagion or pollution in time of pestilence burnt the bodies of their friends And when they burnt not their dead bodies yet sometimes used great burnings neare and about them deducible from the expressions concerning Jehoram Sedechias and the sumptuous pyre of Asa And were so little averse from Pagan burning that the Jews lamenting the death of Caesar their friend and revenger on Pompey frequented the place where his body was burnt for many nights together And as they raised noble Monuments and Mausolaeums for their own Nation so they were not scrupulous in erecting some for others according to the practice of Daniel who left that lasting sepulchrall pyle in Echbatana for the Medean and Persian Kings But even in times of subjection and hottest use they conformed not unto the Romane practice of burning whereby the Prophecy was secured concerning the body of Christ that it should not see corruption or a bone should not be broken which we beleeve was also providentially prevented from the Souldiers spear and nails that past by the little bones both in his hands and feet Not of ordinary contrivance that it should not corrupt on the Crosse according to the Laws of Romane Crucifixion or an hair of his head perish though observable in Jewish customes to cut the hairs of Malefactors Nor in their long co-habitation with Aegyptians crept into a custome of their exact embalming wherein deeply slashing the muscles and taking out the brains and entrails they had broken the

unto their last durations Others rather then be lost in the uncomfortable night of nothing were content to recede into the common being and make one particle of the publick soul of all things which was no more then to return into their unknown and divine Originall again Aegyptian ingenuity was more unsatisfied contriving their bodies in sweet consistences to attend the return of their souls But all was vanity feeding the winde and folly The Aegyptian Mummies which Cambyses or time hath spared avarice now consumeth Mummie is become Merchandise Mizraim cures wounds and Pharaoh is sold for balsoms In vain do individuals hope for Immortality or any patent from oblivion in preservations below the Moon Men have been deceived even in their flatteries above the Sun and studied conceits to perpetuate their names in heaven The various Cosmography of that part hath already varied the names of contrived constellations Nimrod is lost in Orion and Osyris in the Dogge-starre While we look for incorruption in the heavens we finde they are but like the Earth Durable in their main bodies alterable in their parts whereof beside Comets and new Stars perspectives begin to tell tales And the spots that wander about the Sun with Phaetons favour would make clear conviction There is nothing strictly immortall but immortality whatever hath no beginning may be confident of no end All others have a dependent being and within the reach of destruction which is the peculiar of that necessary essence that cannot destroy it self And the highest strain of omnipotency to be so powerfully constituted as not to suffer even from the power of it self But the sufficiency of Christian Immortality frustrates all earthly glory and the quality of either state after death makes a folly of posthumous memory God who can only destroy our souls and hath assured our resurrection either of our bodies or names hath directly promised no duration Wherein there is so much of chance that the boldest Expectants have found unhappy frustration and to hold long subsistence seems but a scape in oblivion But man is a Noble Animal splendid in ashes and pompous in the grave solemnizing Nativities and Deaths with equall lustre nor omitting Ceremonies of bravery in the infamy of his nature Life is a pure flame and we live by an invisible Sun within us A small fire sufficeth for life great flames seemed too little after death while men vainly affected precious pyres and to burn like Sardanapalus but the wisedom of funerall Laws found the folly of prodigall blazes and reduced undoing fires unto the rule of sober obsequies wherein few could be so mean as not to provide wood pitch a mourner and an Urne Five Languages secured not the Epitaph of Gordianus The man of God lives longer without a Tomb then any by one invisibly interred by Angels and adjudged to obscurity though not without some marks directing humane discovery Enoch and Elias without either tomb or buriall in an anomalous state of being are the great Examples of perpetuity in their long and living memory in strict account being still on this side death and having a late part yet to act upon this staye of earth If in the decretory term of the world we shall not all dye but be changed according to received translation the last day will make but few graves at least quick Resurrections will anticipate lasting Sepultures Some Graves will be opened before they be quite closed and Lazarus be no wonder When many that feared to dye shall groane that they can dye but once the dismall state is the second and living death when life puts despair on the damned when men shall wish the coverings of Mountaines not of Monuments and annihilation shall be courted While some have studied Monuments others have studiously declined them and some have been so vainly boisterous that they durst not acknowledge their Graves wherein Alaricus seems most subtle who had a River turned to hide his bones at the bottome Even Sylla that thought himself safe in his Urne could not prevent revenging tongues and stones thrown at his Monument Happy are they whom privacy makes innocent who deal so with men in this world that they are not afraid to meet them in the next who when they dye make no commotion among the dead and are not toucht with that poeticall taunt of Isaiah Pyramids Arches Obelisks were but the irregularities of vain-glory and wilde enormities of ancient magnanimity But the most magnanimous resolution rests in the Christian Religion which trampleth upon pride and sets on the neck of ambition humbly pursuing that infallible perpetuity unto which all others must diminish their diameters and be poorly seen in Angles of contingency Pious spirits who passed their dayes in raptures of futurity made little more of this world then the world that was before it while they lay obscure in the Chaos of pre-ordination and night of their fore-beings And if any have been so happy as truly to understand Christian annihilation extasis exolution liquefaction transformation the kisse of the Spouse gustation of God and ingression into the divine shadow they have already had an handsome anticipation of heaven the glory of the world is surely over and the earth in ashes unto them To subsist in lasting Monuments to live in their productions to exist in their names and praedicament of Chymera's was large satisfaction unto old expectations and made one part of their Elyziums But all this is nothing in the Metaphysicks of true belief To live indeed is to be again our selves which being not only an hope but an evidence in noble beleevers 'T is all one to lye in S t Innocents Church-yard as in the Sands of Aegypt Ready to be any thing in the extasie of being ever and as content with six foot as the Moles of Adrianus Lucan Tabesne cadaverasolvats An rogus hand refert Quid Quin cunce speciosius qui in quam cungz partem spectaueris rectus est Quintilian THE GARDEN OF CYRVS OR The Quincunciall Lozenge or Net-work Plantations of the Ancients Artificially Naturally Mystically Considered BY Thomas Brown D. of Physick Printed in the Year 1658. The Garden of Cyrus OR The Quincunciall Lozenge or Net-work Plantations of the Ancients Artificially Naturally Mystically considered CHAPTER I. THat Vulcan gave arrows unto Apollo and Diana the fourth day after their Nativities according to Gentile Theology may passe for no blinde apprehension of the Creation of the Sunne and Moon in the work of the fourth day When the diffused light contracted into Orbes and shooting rayes of those Luminaries Plainer Descriptions there are from Pagan pens of the creatures of the fourth day While the divine Philosopher unhappily omitteth the noblest part of the third And Ovid whom many conceive to have borrowed his description from Moses coldly deserting the remarkable account of the text in three words describeth this work of the third day the vegetable creation and first ornamentall

colors but shades and shadows contrived through the great Volume of nature and trees ordained not only to protect and shadow others but by their shades and shadowing parts to preserve and cherish themselves The whole radiation or branchings shadowing the stock and the root the leaves the branches and fruit too much exposed to the windes and scorching Sunne The calicular leaves inclose the tender flowers and the flowers themselves lye wrapt about the seeds in their rudiment and first formations which being advanced the flowers fall away and are therefore contrived in variety of figures best satisfying the intention Handsomely observable in hooded and gaping flowers and the Butterfly bloomes of leguminous plants the lower leaf closely involving the rudimental Cod and the alary or wingy divisions embracing or hanging over it But Seeds themselves do lie in perpetual shades either under the leaf or shut up in coverings And such as lye barest have their husks skins and pulps about them wherein the nebbe and generative particle lyeth moist and secured from the injury of Ayre and Sunne Darknesse and light hold interchangeable dominions and alternately rule the seminal state of things Light unto Plato is darknesse unto Jupiter Legions of seminall Idaea's lye in their second Chaos and Orcus of Hipocrat●s till putting on the habits of their forms they shew themselves upon the stage of the world and open dominion of Jove They that held the Stars of heaven were but rayes and flashing glimpses of the Empyreall light through holes and perforations of the upper heaven took of the natural shadows of stars while according to better discovery the poor Inhabitants of the Moone have but a polary life and must passe half their dayes in the shadow of that Luminary Light that makes things seen makes some things invisible were it not for darknesse and the shadow of the earth the noblest part of the Creation had remained unseen and the Stars in heaven as invisible as on the fourth day when they were created above the Horizon with the Sun or there was not an eye to behold them The greatest mystery of Religion is expressed by adumbration and in the noblest part of Jewish Types we finde the Cherubims shadowing the Mercy-seat Life it self is but the shadow of death and souls departed but the shadows of the living All things fall under this name The Sunne it self is but the dark simulachrum and light but the shadow of God Lastly It is no wonder that this Quincunciall order was first and still affected as gratefull unto the Eye For all things are seen Quincuncially For at the eye the Pyramidal rayes from the object receive a decussation and so strike a second base upon the Retina or hinder coat the proper organ of Vision wherein the pictures from objects are represented answerable to the paper or wall in the dark chamber after the decussation of the rayes at the hole of the hornycoat and their refraction upon the Christalline humour answering the foramen of the window and the convex or burning-glasses which refract the rayes that enter it And if ancient Anatomy would hold a like disposure there was of the optick or visual nerves in the brain wherein Antiquity conceived a concurrence by decussation And this not only observable in the Laws of direct Vision but in some part also verified in the reflected rayes of sight For making the angle of incidence equal to that of reflexion the visuall raye returneth Quincuncially and after the form of a V and the line of reflexion being continued unto the place of vision there ariseth a semi-decussation which makes the object seen in a perpendicular unto it self and as farre below the reflectent as it is from it above observable in the Sun and Moon beheld in water And this is also the law of reflexion in moved bodies and sounds which though not made by decussation observe the rule of equality between incidence and reflexion whereby whispering places are framed by Ellipticall arches laid side-wise where the voice being delivered at the focus of one extremity observing an equality unto the angle of incidence it will reflect unto the focus of the other end and so escape the ears of the standers in the middle A like rule is observed in the reflection of the vocall and sonorous line in Ecchoes which cannot therefore be heard in all stations But happening in woody plantations by waters and able to return some words if reacht by a pleasant and well-dividing voice there may be heard the softest notes in nature And this not only verified in the way of●ence but in animall and intellectuall receptions Things entring upon the intellect by a Pyramid from without and thence into the memory by another from within the common decussation being in the understanding as is delivered by Bovillus Whether the intellectual and phantastical lines be not thus rightly disposed but magnified diminished distorted and ill placed in the Mathematicks of some brains whereby they have irregular apprehensions of things perverted notions conceptions and incurable hallucinations were no unpleasant speculation And if Aegyptian Philosophy may obtain the scale of influences was thus disposed and the geniall spirits of both worlds do trace their way in ascending and descending Pyramids mystically apprehended in the Letter X and the open Bill and stradling Legges of a Stork which was imitated by that Character Of this Figure Plato made choice to illustrate the motion of the soul both of the world and man while he delivereth that God divided the whole conjunction length-wise according to the figure of a Greek X and then turning it about reflected it into a circle By the circle implying the uniform motion of the first O●b and by the right lines the planetical and various motions within it And this also with application unto the soul of man which hath a double aspect one right whereby it beholdeth the body and objects without another circular and reciprocal whereby it beholdeth it self The circle declaring the motion of the indivisible soul simple according to the divinity of its nature and returning into it self the right lines respecting the motion pertaining unto sense and vegetation and the central decussation the wondrous connexion of the severall faculties conjointly in one substance And so conjoyned the unity and duality of the soul and made out the three substances so much considered by him That is the indivisible or divine the divisible or corporeal and that third which was the Systasis or harmony of those two in the mystical decussation And if that were clearly made out which Justin Martyr took for granted this figure hath had the honour to characterize and notifie our blessed Saviour as he delivereth in that borrowed expression from Plato Decussavit eum in universo the hint whereof he would have Plato derive from the figure of the brazen Serpent and to have mistaken the Letter X for T whereas it is not improbable he learned these and other