above all Magick What then was the Impulsive of writing against your book I have told you already but you are loth to beâ—ieve me Mere emnity to immorality and foolery But if it were any thing that might respect my self it was onely this That you so carelesly and confidently adventuring upon the Platonick way with so much tainted heat and distemper that to my better composed spirit you seemed not a little disturbed in your fancie and your bloud to be too hot to be sufficiently rectified by your brain I thought it safe for me to keep those Books I wrote out of a spirit of sobernesse from reprochfull mistake For you pretending the same way that I seem to be in as in your bold and disadvantagious asserting The soul to pre-exist and to come into the bodie open-ey'd as it were that is full fraught with divine notions and making such out-ragiously distorted delineaments of that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as the Stoicks call it the enlivened Universe with sundry other passages of like grossnesse I was afraid that men judging that this affectation of Platonisme in you might well proceed from some intemperies of bloud and spirit and that there no body else besides us two dealing with these kinds of notions they might yoke me with so disordered a companion as your self Reasoning thus with themselves Vaughan of Iesus in Oxenford holds the pre-existencie of the Soul and other Platonick Paradoxes and we see what a pickle he is in What think you of More of Christ's that writ the Platonicall Poems Nay what think you of Platonisme it self Surely it is all but the fruit of juvenile distemper and intoxicating heat But I say it is the most noble and effectuall Engine to fetch up a mans mind to true virtue and holinesse next to the Bible that is extant in the world And that this may not suffer I have suffered my self to observe upon you what I have observed my young Eugenius This is true my Friend to use your own phrase SECT II. Mastix provoked by the unworthy surmises of Eugenius gives the world a tast of that Spirit that actuated him when he wrote his Poems Eugenius his abuse of Des-Cartes the greatest personall Impulsive to Mastix to write his Observations The Divine accomplishments of the Soul farre beyond all naturall knowledge What is true Deiformitie A vehement Invective against the Deified rout of Ranters and Libertines Mastix magnifies the dominion of his own minde over the passions of the body preferring it before the Empire of the world and all the power of Magick that Eugenius so bankers after ANd now that the World may know that I have not wrote like some bestrid Pythonick or hackneyed Enthusiastick let them look and read under what light I sat and sung that divine Song of the Soul But yet my Muse still take an higher flight Sing of Platonick Faith in the first Good That Faith that doth our souls to God unite So strongly tightly that the rapid stood Of this swift flux of things nor with foul mud Can stain nor strike us off from th' Vnity Wherein we stedfast stand unshak'd unmov'd Engrafted by a deep Vitalitie The prop and stay of things is Gods Benignity Al 's is the rule of His Oeconomie No other cause the creature brought to light But the first Goods pregnant fecundity He to himself is perfect-full delight He wanteth nought With his own beams bedight He glory has enough O blasphemy That envy gives to God or sowre despight Harsh hearts that feign in God a Tyranny Vnder pretense to encrease his soveraign Majesty When nothing can to Gods own self accrew Who 's infinitely happy sure the end Of His Creation simply was to shew His flowing goodnesse which He doth outsend Not for himself for nought can Him amend But to his Creature doth his good impart This infinite Good through all the world doth wâ—nd To fill with Heavenly blisse each willing heart So the free Sun doth light and liven every part This is the measure of Gods providence The Key of knowledge the first fair Idee The eye of Truth the spring of living Sense Whence sprout Gods secrets the sweet mystery Of lasting life eternall Charity c. And elsewhere in my Poems When I my self from mine own self do quit And each thing else then all-spreaden love To the vast Vniverse my soul doth fit Makes me half equall to all-seeing Iove My mighty wings high stretch'd then clapping light I brush the stars and make them shine more bright Then all the works of God with close embrace I dearly hug in my enlarged arms All the hid pathes of heavenly love I trace And boldly listen to his secret charms Then clearly view I where true light doth rise And where eternall Night low-pressed lies c. This Philalethes is that lamp of God in the light whereof my Reason and Fancie have wrought thus many years This is that true Chymicall fire that has purged my soul and purified it and has crystallized it into a bright Throne and shining Habitation of the divine Majesty This free light is that which having held my soul in it self for a time taught me in a very sensible manner â—hat vast difference betwixt the truth and freedome of the Spirit and anxious impostures of this dark Personalïty and earthly bondage of the body This is my Oracle my Counsellour my faithfull Instructer and Guide my Life my Strength my Glory my Joy my communicated God This is that heavenly flame and bright Sun of Righteousnesse that puts out the light and quenches the heat of all worldly imaginations and desires whatsoever All the power and knowledge in Nature that is all the feats and miraculous performances done by Witches Magicians or Devils they be but toyes and tricks and are no solid satisfaction of the soul at all yea though we had that power upon lawfull terms if compared with this And as for divine knowledge there is none truly so called without it He that is come hither God hath taken him to his own familiar friend and though he speak to others aloof off in outward Religions and Parables yet he leads this man by the hand teaching him intelligible documents upon all the objects of his Providence speaks to him plainly in his own language sweetly insinuates himself and possesses all his faculties Understanding Reason and Memory This is the Darling of God and a Prince amongst men farre above the dispensation of either Miracle or Prophesie For him the deep searchers and anxious soliciters of Nature drudge and toyl contenting themselves with the pitifull wages of vain glory or a little wealth Poor Giboonites that how wood and draw water for the Temple This is the Temple of God this is the Son of God whom he hath made heir of all things the right Emanuel the holy mysterie of the living members of Christ Hallelujah From this Principle which I have here expressed have all those Poems I have wrote
somewhat by way of Preface concerning the nature of that Disease partly because it may be the better discerned of what good use the Authour's pains are against this distemper of Fantastrie and Enthusiasme and partly because by a more punctuall discovery of this distemper the distemper it self or at least the ill influence of it upon the credulous inconsiderate may be prevented For where the naturall causes of things are laid open there that stupid reverence and admiration which surprises the ignorant will assuredly cease Which is a thing of no lesse consequence then the preserving of that honest and rationall way of the education of youth in liberall Arts and Sciences and upholding of Christian Religion it self from being supplanted and overturned from the very foundations by the dazeling and glorious plausibilities of bold Enthusiasts who speaking great swelling words of vanity bear down the weak and unskilfull multitude into such a belief of Supernaturall graces and inspirations in their admired Prophet that they will not stâ—ck to listen to him though he dictate to them what is contrary not onely to solid Reason and the judgement of the most learned and pious in all ages but even to the undoubted Oracles of the holy Scriptures themselves Wherefore for the detecting of this mysterious Imposture we shall briefly and yet I hope plainly enough set out the Nature Causes Kinds and Cure of this mischievous Disease 2. The Etymologie and varietie of the significations of this word Enthusiasme I leave to Criticks and Grammarians but what we mean by it here you shall fully understand after we have defined what Inspiration is For Enthusiasme is nothing else but a misconceit of being inspired Now to be inspired is to be moved in an extraordinary manner by the power or Spirit of God to act speak or think what is holy just and true From hence it will be easily understood what Enthusiasme is viz. A full but false perswasion in a man that he is inspired 3. We shall now enquire into the Causes of this Distemperâ— how it comes to passe that a man should be thus befooled in his own conceit And truly unlesse we should offer lesse satisfaction then the thing is capable of we must not onely treat here of Melancholy but of the Faculties of the Soul of man whereby it may the better be understood how she may become obnoxious to such disturbances of Melancholy in which she has quite lost her own judgement and freedome and can neither keep out nor distinguish betwixt her own fancies and reall truths 4. We are therefore to take notice of the severall Degrees and Natures of the faculties of the Soul the lowest whereof she exercises without so much as any perception of what she does and these operations are fatall and naturall to her so long as she is in the body and a man differs in them little from a Plant which therefore you may call the Vegetative or Plantall faculties of the Soul The lowest of those Faculties of whose present operations we have any perception are the outward Senses which upon the pertingencie of the Object to the Sensitive Organ cannot fail to act that is the Soul cannot fail to be affected thereby nor is it in her power to suspend her perception or at least very hardly in her power From whence it is plain that the Soul is of that nature that she sometimes may awake fatally and necessarily into Phantasmes and Perceptions without any will or consent of her own Which is found true also in Imagination though that Facultie be freer then the former For what are Dreams but the Imaginations and perceptions of one asleep which notwithstanding steal upon the Soul or rise out of her without any consent of hers as is most manifest in such as torment us and put us to extreme pain till we awake out of them And the like obreptions or unavoydable importunities of Thoughts which offer or force themselves upon the mind may be observed even in the day time according to the nature or strength of the complexion of our Bodies though how the Body doth engage the mind in Thoughts or Imaginations is most manifest in Sleep For according as Choler Sanguine Phlegme or Melancholy are predominant will the Scene of our dreams be and that without any check or curb of dubitation concerning the truth and existence of the things that then appear Of which we can conceive no other reason then this That the inmost seat of Sense is very fully and vigourously affected as it is by objects in the day of whose reall existence the ordinary assurance is that they so strongly strike or affect our sensitive Facultie which resides not in the externall Organs no more then the Artificers skill in his instruments but in some more inward Recesses of the brain and therefore the true and reall seat of Sense being affected in our sleep as well as when we are awake 't is the lesse marvell the Soul conceits her dreams while she is a dreaming to be no dreams but reall transactions 5. Now that the inward sense is so vigoroufly affected in these dreams proceeds as I conceive from hence because the Brains Animall spirits or what ever the Soul works upon within in her imaginative operations are not considerably moved altered or agitated from any externall motion but keep intirely and fully that figuration or modification which the Soul necessarily naturally moulds them into in our sleep so that the opinion of the truth of what is represented to us in our dreams is from hence that Imagination then that is the inward figuration of our brain or spirits into this or that representation is far stronger then any motion or agitation from without which to them that are awake dimmes and obscures their inward imagination as the light of the Sun doth the light of a candle in a room and yet in this case also according to Aristotle Fancy is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a kind of sense though weak But if it were so strong as to bear it self against all the occursions and impulses of outward objects so as not to be broken but to keep it self entire and in equall splendour and vigour with what is represented from without and this not arbitrariously but necessarily and unavoydably as has been already intimated the Party thus affected would not fail to take his own imagination for a reall object of sense as it fell out in one that Cartesius mentions and there are several other examples of that kind that had his arm cut off who being hoodwinkt complained of a pain in this and the other finger when he had lost his whole arm And a further instance may be in mad or Melancholy men who have confidently affirmed that they have met with the Devil or conversed with Angels when it has been nothing but an encounter with their own fancie 6. Wherefore it is the enormous strength of Imagination which is yet the Soul's weaknesse or unweildinesse
else that moves in the blood and Spirits and comes very neer to the nature of the highest Cordialls that are Which Aristotle also witnesses asserting that Melancholy while it is cold causes sadnesse and despondency of minde but once heated 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Extasies and Raptures with triumphant joy and singing 24. There are Three delusions yet behinde which because they come into my memory I will not omit to speak of viz. Mystical interpretations of Scripture Quakings and Visions all which are easily resolved into effects of Melancholy For as for the first we have already shown that Melancholy as well as Wine makes a man Rhetoricall or Poetical and that Genius how fancieful it is and full of allusions and Metaphors and fine resemblances every one knows And what greater matter is there in applying moral and spiritual meanings to the history of the Bible then to the History of Nature and there is no Rhetorician nor Poet but does that perpetually Or how much easier is it to make a story to set out a moral meaning then to apply a moral sense to such stories as are already a foot And for the former AEsop was old excellent at it without any suspicion of inspiration and the later Sir Francis Bacon has admirably wel performed in his Sapientia Veterum without any such peculiar or extraordinary illapses of a divine Spirit into him a business I dare say he never dreamt of and any man that understands him will willingly be his Compurgatour 25. And for Quaking which deluded soules take to be an infallible sign they are in actuated by the Spirit of God that it may be onely an effect of their Melancholy is apparent for none have so high passions as Melancholists and that Fear Love or Veneration in the height will cause great Trembling cannot be denied And to these passions none are any thing nigh so obnoxious as those of the Melancholy Complexion because of the deepness of their resentments and apprehensions That Fear causes trembling there is nothing more obvious and it is as true of Love which the Comoedian had judiciously noted in that passage where Phaedria upon the sight of his Thais speaking to Parmeno Totus tremo say's he horreóque post quam aspexi hanc And for Veneration which consists in a maner of these two mixt together it is a passion that Melancholy men are soundly plunged in whether they will or no when they are to make their addresses to any person of honour or worth or to go about some solemn or weighty performance in publick they wil quake tremble like an Aspinleaf some have bin struck silent others have faln down to the ground And that Fancy in other cases wil work upon the Spirits and cause a tumultuous and disorderly comotion in them or so suffocate the heart that motion will be in a manner quite extinct and the party fall down dead are things so familiarly known that it is enough onely to mention them Wherefore it is no wonder the Enthusiast fancying these natural Paroxysms with which he is surprised to be extraordinary visits of the Deity and illapses of the holy Ghost into his Soul which he cannot but then receive with the highest Veneration imaginable it is no wonder I say that Fear and Ioy and Love should make such a confusion in his spirits as to put him into a fit of trembling and quaking In which case the fervour of his spirits and heat of imagination may be wrought-up to that pitch that it may amount to a perfect Epilepsie as it often happens in that sect they call Quakers who undoubtedly are the most Melancholy Sect that ever was yet in the world 26. Now that Melancholy disposes a man to Apoplexies and Epilepsies is acknowledged both by Philosophers and Physicians For what is Narcotical and deads the motion of the Spirits if it be highly such proves also Apoplectical Besides grosse vapours stopping the Arteriae Carotides and Plexus Coroides and so hindring the recourse and supply of Spirits may doe the same Some would illustrate the matter from the fumes of Charcoale that has often made men fall down dead But take any or all of these Melancholy is as like to afford such noxious vapours as any other temper whatsoever And that an Epilepsie may arise from such like causes these two diseases being so neer a kin as Galen writes is very reasonable and that the morbifick matter is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as his Master Pelops expresses it it is evident from the suddain and easy discussion of the fit 27. But in both these there being a ligation of the outward senses what ever is then represented to the mind is of the nature of a dream But these fits being not so ordinary as our naturall sleep these dreams the praecipitant and unskilfull are forward to conceit to be Representations extraordinary and supernatural which they call Revelations or Visions of which there can be no certainty at all no more then of a Dream 28. The mention of Dreams puts me in mind of another Melancholy Symptome which Physitians call Extasie which is nothing else but Somnus praeter naturam profundus the causes whereof are none other then those of natural sleep but more intense and excessive the effect is the deliration of the party after he awakes for he takes his dreams for true Histories and real Transactions The reason whereof I conceive is the extraordinary clearness and fulness of the representations in his sleep arising from a more perfect privation of all communion with this outward world and so there being no interfareings or cross-strokes of motion from his body so deeply overwhelmed and bedeaded with sleep what the imagination then puts forth of her self is as clear as broad day and the perception of the soul is at least as strong and vigorous as it is at any time in beholding things awake and therefore Memory as thoroughly sealed therewith as from the sense of any external Object The vigour and clearness of these Visions differs from those in ordinary sleep as much as the liveliness of the images let in artificially into a dark room accurately darkned from those in one carelesly made dark some chinks or crevises letting in light where they should not But strength of perception is no sure ground of truth And such visions as these let them be never so clear yet they are still in the nature of dreams And he that regardeth dreams is like him that catcheth at a shadow or followeth after the wind as Syracides speaks 29. Whether it be in any mans power to fall into these Epilepsies Apoplexies or Extasies when he pleases is neither an useless nor a desperate question For we may find a probable solution from what has been already intimated for the Enthusiast in one of his Melancholy intoxications which he may accelerate by solemn silence and intense and earnest meditation finding himself therein so much beyond himselfe conceits it a sensible presence
and positive Exposition of all the passages Why man that is more assuredly then your self can do For you are so weak and supine in many things that are intelligible that I am confident you are worse in that which you have made lesse intelligible For as Socrates reading an obscure Authour when he found all things he understood very good did charitably conclude what he understood not was much better so I finding in this obscure Treatise of yours many things very ill I also in charity will think you had the wit to conceal those things which are the worst or which will serve the turn that you understand them not your self But have an itching desire that some Reader skilfuller then your self should tell you whether you have wrote sense or non-sense Like the Countrey Clown that desired his young Master to teach him to write and being asked how he would be able to read his own writing being as yet never acquainted so much as with the christ-crosse-row made answer he would get some body else to read it for him And so you Philalethes though you can read your own writing yet you desire to get some body else to understand it for you or to interpret to you what you have writ Your second request is not much unlike the former and too big a business for your self to doe and therefore you beg it of another Your third request is to have your book handled after your own maner and method Which is as ridiculous as if you should request your enemy to smite softly or to strike after such a fashion at such a part as you will appoint him Can it be reasonable for you to expect from an Aristotelean for you must think it would be they of all men that would flie about your ears first when you have used their Master Aristotle as they would not to be used of them as you wouldâ— But notwithstanding Philalethes you see I have bin fair with you and though provoked I shall continue the same candour in my Observations on your following peece But before I pass I must take notice of your two admonitions to the ingenuous Reader for I suppose you mean me Philalethes The first is that I would not despise your endevours because of your yeers for they are but few Why man who knew that but your selfe if you could have kept your own counsell Your name is not at your book much less your age But indeed many things are so well managed of you that if you had not told us so we might have shrewdly suspected you have scarcely reached the yeers of discretion But you are so mightily taken with your own performance that to increase admiration and for the bringing in a phrase or sentence out of Proclus you could not with-hold from telling us that you are but a young man and so we easily believe it But the more saucy Boy you to be so bold with Reverend Master Aristotle that grandeval Patriarch in points of Philosophy For the second admonition it is little more then a noise or clatter of words or if you will a meer rattle for a boy to play with And so I leave it in your hand to passe away the time till I meet you againe in your Anima Magica Abscondita Upon the Preface to the READER NOw God defend what will become of me In good faith Philalethes I doe not know what may become of you in time But for the present me thinks you are become a fool in a play or a Jack-pudding at the dancing on the Ropes a thing wholly set in a posture to make the people laugh Phy Phy Philalethes Doe these humorous and Mimical schemes of speech become so profound a Theomagician as your self would seem to be Do's this ridiculous levity become a man of your profession You doe not a little disparage your self by these boyish humors my good Philalethes For mine own part I am neither so light-headed noâ— light-footed as to dance the Morisco with you measure to measure through this whole toy of yours to the Reader I shall dispatch what I have to say at once Your main drift here is to prove Agrippa's Dogs no Divels and their Master no Papist and consequently your selfe no unlawful Magician or Conjurer And truly if the assembly of Divines be no more suspicious of you then my self I am abundantly satisfied that you are rather a giddy fantastick then an able Conjurer so that without any offence to me you may take Wierus his office if you will and for want of imployment lead about Agrippa's beagles in a string In the mean time I shall busie my selfe almost to as little purpose in the perusal of your Anima Magica Abscondita Upon Anima Magica Abscondita SECT I. 1. Eugenius his maimed citation of Aristotles definition of Nature 2. His illogical exception against him for using of a general Notion in this definition and a difference expressing onely what Nature does not what she is 3. His ridiculous exception against Magirus his definition of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or forma Quae absolvit expolit informat rem naturalem ut per eam una ab altera distinguatur 4. His barbarous translation of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Consummatio or Finitatio and a repetition of his former cavil 5. He exhorts the Peripateticks to change their Abstractions into Extractions that they may discerne the substantial formes themselves in the inward closet of Matter 6. Tells us that the motions of the heavens are from an internal Principle and that Intelligences are fabulous 7. Reproaches the Scriblers concerning Matâ—er and Forme as writing nothing to their own credit or profit of the Reader 8. Informes us that the Anima mundi retained in the Matter and missing a vent organizeth bodies 9. His misapplication of that Hemistichium of Virgil Auraï simplicis ignem The passive spirit the inmost vestment of the soul applying to Generation and that the vital liquour or aethereal water attracts the passive spirit 10. His chain of Descent whereby the soule is caught in the Matter 11. His declaring of the foregoing mystery makes him suspect that he has too publikely prostituted the secrets of Nature Observation 1. ANd here Philalethes in the very threshold you begin to worrey the poor Perepateticks more fiercely then any English mastive and bark and scold into the air that is in general more cursedly and bitterly then any Butter-quean but at last in the first line of the second page you begin to take to task some particular Documents of Aristotles viz. The description of Nature of Form and of the Soul Whereby we shall understand of what great judgement and perspicacity you are in other points of Philosophy And first of the Definition of Nature which you say is defined Principium motus quietis A little thing serves your turn Anthroposophus is this the entire Definition of Nature in Aristotle But what you unskilfully take no notice of I willingly
which is the holy place or temple of God Observation 30. Tecum habita I will not urge that Precept too strictly upon thy self because I wish thee a better companion Observation 31. For thy ho sounds like the noise of a Sâ—w-gelder As much as the celestiall orbs or labyrinth rumble like a wheel-barrow This is but the crowing of thine own brain to the tune of the Sow-gelders horn SECT VIII The useless mysterie of the Souls being an Hermaphrodite Of the uncleannesse of Aristotle That the shame of lust is an argument that something better then the condition of this mortall body belongs to the Soul That the Soul of man is not propagated as light from light That though she perceive nothing but her own energie yet the distinction of the inward and outward sense is not without its use That Eugenius asserts that blinde men do see in their sleep That there is but one Sentient spirit in a man which is the Rationall soul her self Of understanding without Phantasmes Mastix takes notice of Eugenius his vain boasting of his quick parts That a bad man cannot be so much as a friend to himself The great satisfaction of the plain Truths of Christianitie above the Zeal and intricacie of sects Eugenius his injudicious Poetry wherein intending to praise the Vniversity of Oxford he plainly abuses it That comparison implies not alwayes a Positive That Mastix affects not to confute every thing but what he can plainly show to be false Observation 32. HEre in answer to my objection thou tellest me that Ruac and Nephesh the parts whereof the Soul of man consists differ as male and female All the mysterie then is to make mans soul an Hermaphrodite Thou shouldst have told us here what operations were proper to Ruach what to Nephesh whether vegetation belong to the oneâ— reason and sense to the other or whether in this the divine life were seated in that the animal and fleshly reason and the like But the subtiltie of thy wit reacheth no further then the discrimination of sexes and the grossely pointing out of Male and Female Page 69. line 9. For your Sodomite Patron Aristotle allows of it in his Politicks More wretched beast he if it be so but I do not remember any such passage in his Politicks and yet have read them through but long since and it is sufficient for me if I remember the best things in Authours I read I can willingly let go the worst But what thou sayest of Aristotle is not unlikely for he is tax'd for this unnaturall practise in Diogenes Laertius with one Hermias a foul friend of his in the praise of whom notwithstanding he hath wrote a very fair and elegant Hymne which begins thus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 To this sense Virtue that putst humane race Vpon so hard toyl and pains Lifes fairest prize Thy lovely face Bright Virgin the brave Greek constrains To undergo with an unwearied mind Long wasting labours and in high desire To throng through many deaths to find Thee that dost fire Mans soul with hopes of such immortall fruit No gold can sute Nor love of Parents equalize Nor slumbers sweet that softly seize the eyes So easie a thing is it for bad men to speak good words It is recorded by the same authour out of Aristippus that the same Philosopher was also so much taken with the conversation of Hermias's whore that in lieu of that pleasure he reap'd by her he did the same ceremonies and holy rites to her that the Athenians were wont to do to their goddesse Ceres Eleusinia From whence it seems that his soul did consist of two parts Male and Female he having to do with both So that he is more like to prove thy Patrone then mine Philalethes for I have to do with neither Page 69. line 10. But I am tickled say you Yes I say you are so tickled and do so tickle it up in your style with expressions fetched from the Gynaeceum that you are ridiculous in it and I thought good to shew you to be such as you are But for mine own part I am moved neither one way nor another with any such things but think good to affix here this sober consideration That there being generally in Men and Women that are not either Heroically good or stupidly and beastly naught a kind of shame and aversation in the very naming of these things that it is a signe that the Soul of man doth in its own judgement find it self here in this condition of the body as I may so speak in a wrong box and hath a kind of presage and conscience that better and more noble things belong unto it else why should it be troubled at its own proclivity to that which is the height and flower of the pleasure of the body as they that are given to this folly do professe 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 To this sense What life what sweet without the golden tie Of Venus dead to this streight let me die But that there is a naturall shame of these acts and the propension to them that story of Typhon in Diodorus Siculus is no obscure argument For when he had murdered his brother Osiris that he might more sacramentally bind to him for his future help and security his twenty foure Accomplices in this act he hew'd the body of his brother into so many pieces but was fain to fling the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 his Pudendum into the river they every one being unwilling to take that for their share So much aversation is there naturally from these obscenities that even those that are otherwise execrably wicked have some sense of it But I do not speak this as if Marriage it self were a sinne as well as whoredome and adultery for questionlesse it is permitted to the soul in this case shee 's in But if she be not monstrous and degenerate she cannot but be mindfull that she is made for something farre better Observation 33. To this observation thou answerest like a man with reason and generosity and with a well beseeming wit how unlike to thy self art thou here Anthroposophos Observation 34. I perceive by thy answer to this observation thou art not at all ocquaitted with Ramus what ere thou art with the Schoolmen bnt I passe over this and come to what is of more moment Page 71. line 19. This is one of your three designes Yes it is one of those three designs I tax'd you for in the beginning of my Observations And here I make it good out of your own text Anthroposophia pag. 33. line 1. These are your words And now Reader Arrige aures come on without prejudice and I will tell thee that which never hitherto hath
been discovered What can be more plain if you will but prick up your eares and attend to what you say your self But now I have discovered that this is but a boast of yours concerning a known Notion among the Christian Platonists you begin to pluck in your eares and confesse your self a Plagiary In the rest of your answer you do but teach your Grannam to crack nuts I go on Magicus to the next Observation 35. As a flame of one candle can light a thousand candles more Your answer then to this Observation is this That the Soul is propagated as light is from light That there is a multiplication without decision or division But for thine and the Readers fuller satisfaction I shall answer thee here as thou somewhere demandest in the verse of Spencer but in the reason and sense of More out of these four Stanzaes in my Canto of the Preexistency of the Soul Wherefore who thinks from Souls new Souls to bring The same let presse the sunne beams in his fist And squeeze out drops of Light or strongly wring The Rain-bow till it die his hands well prest Or with uncessant industry persist Th' intentionall species to mash and bray In marble morter till he has exprest A Soveraine eye-salve to discern a Fay. As easily as the first all these effect you may Ne may queint Similes this fury damp Which say that our souls propagation Is as when lamp we lighten from a lamp Which done withouten diminution Of the first light shews how the soul of man Though indivisible may another rear Imparting life But if we rightly scan This argument it cometh nothing near To light the lamp's to kindle the sulphureous gear No substance new that act doth then produce Onely the oyly atomes 't doth excite And wake into a flame But no such use There is of humane Sperm For our free sprite Is not the kindled seed but substance quite Distinct there from If not Then bodies may So changed be by Nature and Stiffe fight Of hungry stomachs that what earst was clay Then hearbs in time it self in sence may well display For then our Soul can nothing be but bloud Or nerves or brains or body modifyde Whence it will follow that cold stopping crud Hard mouldy cheese dry nuts when they have rid Due circuits through the heart at last shall speed Of life and sense look thorough our thin eyes And view the Close wherein the Cow did feed Whence they were milk'd grosse Py-crust will grow wise And pickled Cucumbers sans doubt Philosophize Observation 37. Bid adiew to thy reputation Mastix Well now I perceive that thou thinkest that thou hast hit the nail on the head indeed But all that thou dost or canst collect from what is in my Preface to the Canto concerning the sleep of the Soul is but this that whether we see or imagine that both of these are but the very Eâ—ergie of the Soul and that the Soul doth not nor can perceive any thing immediately but her own Energie But what of all this It doth not thence follow that the inward and outward sense is all one but onely unitate genericâ no more then if I should say that to be an Animal is but to have corporeall substance life and sense it would thence follow that an horse and a man are all one Look thee now Magicus how I have passed through this huge Mound and Bulwark of thine with as much ease and stilnesse as a gliding Spirit through a Mud-wall I will onely look back and laugh at thee Magicus for a man of no Logick But if any man doubt whether thou saist blind men see in their sleep it is apparent thou doest For in thy Anthroposophia Page 40. line 1. thou saist That the visible power is not destroyd as is plain in the dreams of blind men Here if thou knowst what thou saist thou arguest from the effect to the cause from the operation to the faculty but is the operation of the Visive faculty for thou dost barbarously call it visible any thing else but seeing therefore thou dost plainly assert that blind men see in their sleep It would be well if they could walk in their sleep too for then they would scarce have any losse of their eyes Observation 38. Magicus I do not altogether contemn the Symboles and Signatures of Nature but I believe that Euphrasia or Eye-bright that hath the signature of the Eye sees or feels no more then the pulp of a walnut that hath the signature of the brain doth understand or imagine Observation 39. What a pittifull account dost thou give me here of the difficulties I urged thee with My Queres were these You making two Spirits in a man the Rationall and Sensitive First Whether the Rationall Spirit doth not hear and see in a man Here you distinguish The Sensitive Spirit sees the Object say you and the Rationall the Species But I say unto thee that Sensation is nothing else but the perceiving of some present corporeall object and that the Rationall soul doth For when two men discourse that in them that reasons hears the words and sees the party with whom it reasoneth does it not Therefore they both see the object But you will say One sees by a species the other without I say nothing can be discerned without a species that is without an actuall representation of the thing discerned So that that distinction is in vain And I would adde this further That every sentient spirit must perceive by its own species and not by anothers But thou sayest This sensitive Spirit like a glasse represents the species of externall objects Then it seems the Sensitive spirits office is to be the glasse of the Soul to see things in but glasses themselves Magicus are not sentient nor need this Spirit be so that is the souls glasse and it is plain it is not For if these two were two different sensitive spirits then they would have two different Animadversions but there is but one Animadversive spirit in a man and therefore but one Sensitve And that there is but one Animadversive spirit in a Man is plain from hence that if the Rationall animadversive bestow its animadversion fully elsewhere the Sensitive in man cannot perform the thousandth part of that which is performed in brutes We should lose our selves in the most triviall matters when notwithstanding this sensitive spirit in man would have as quick a vehicle as in most brutes Besides this Sensitive spirit having this animadversion would have also a Memory apart and would be able while the Rationall is busied about something else to lay up observations such as Beasts do by it self and then long after to shew them to the Rationall to its sudden amazement and astonishment But none of these things are And in my apprehension it is in a very grosse and palpable way sensible to me that there is but one Animadversive in me and I think I am no monster
If I be it is it seems in that I am all rationall spirit and have had the luck to misse of the sensitive the beast Page 77. line 3. If this be true then there be two hearing and seeing souls in a man This is my second Quere I ask'd if there be To this you answer Ha ha he A very profound answer This is no laughing matter my friend Have I not already shew'd you some difficulties this asserting two sensitive Spirits in a man is laden with Answer them Phil. I should gladly heare thee use thy tongue as well as see thee shew thy teeth by laughing For that slender faint reason that follows thy loud laughing viz. The objects are different and the senses are different that is taken a way already For the sting of my Argument is not this that there would be two sensitive souls of the same nature in the body of a man but that there should be two sensitive souls at all And indeed considering that the superiour soul contains the faculties of the inferiour it is altogether needlesse And that is a very sober truth Entia non sunt multiplicanda sine necessitate Which is to the same sense with that so often repeated in Aristotle and Theophrastus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 God and Nature do nothing in vain And the right organization of parts and due temperature of the body and proportion of animal spirits this is all the glasse the Soul of man wants in this life to see by or receive species from But his glasse hath no more sense it self then an urinall or looking-glasse hath Where are you now Phil. with your Ha ha he Line 10. I could Mastix teach thee an higher truth Yes truly Magicus you are best of all at those truths which dwell the highest You love to soar aloft out of the ken of sense and reason that you may securely Raunt it there in words of a strange sound and no signification But though thou fliest up so high like a Crow that hath both his eyes bor'd out yet I have thee in a string and can pluck thee down for all thy fluttering Thou sayest that a Soul may understand all things sine conversione ad Phantasmata this I suppose thou wouldst say to contradict Aristotle but I do not suspect thee of so much learning as to have read him He tells us in his book De Anima 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that there is no understanding without Phantasmes Yon say that we may understand all things without them What think you of Individualls Magicus of which it is controverted amongst the Platonists whether there be any Idea's of them or no. But being you are so confident an assertor let 's heare how stout a prover you are of your assertions Know you this you have spoken by Sense Reason or divine Revelation By this string I have pluck'd this blind Crow down I have him as tame in my hand as a Titmouse look how he pants and gapes and shews the white tip of his tongue but sayes nothing Go thy wayes Phil. for a pure Philosophick Thraso Observation 41. Three quarters of a year hast thou spent c. O Magicus Magicus thou art youthfull and vain-glorious and tellest thy Tutour that this hasty cookery thou entertainest him with was dispatch'd and dress'd up some ten daies after the Presse was deliver'd of my Observations How many ten dayes doest thou mean by thy some ten dayes Thou wouldst have thy Tutour to stroke thee on the head for a quick-parted lad I perceive Eugenius But hadst thou not better have staid longer and writ better sense more reason and with lesse rayling But I poore slow beast how long dost thoâ— think I was viewing and observing that other excellent piece of thine I confesse Magicus because thou forcest me to play the fool as well as thy self I was almost three quarters of a Moneth about it and how much more is that then some ten dayes though but twice told over and I will not be so curiously vain-glorious as to tell thee how great a share of this time was daily taken from me by necessary imployments This is to answer thy folly with folly But I thank God that I glory in nothing but that I feel my self an Instrument in the hand of God to work the good of Men. The greatest strength of a man is weaknesse and the power of Reason while we are in this state depends so much of the organs of the body that its force is very uncertain and fickle Is not the whole consistency of the body of Man as a crudled cloud or coagulated vapour and his Personality a walking shadow and dark imposture All flesh is grasse and the glory thereof as the flower of the field but the word of the Lord endureth for ever Verily the people are as grasse Observation 42. Have at you my friends the Independents The Independents indeed may be thy friends Magicus but I dare say thou art not in a capacitie to be theirs as having not yet wit and morality enough to be a friend unto thy self 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 A bad man cannot be friendly disposed towards himself as having nothing in himself amiable and friendly Aristot. Eth. ad Nicom lib. 9. cap. 4. Observation 43. Mastix You denied formerly the Scripture was intended for Philosophie But you contending that it was how fondly do you preferre Agrippa before Moses and Christ. This you would have called blasphemy but I have learned no such hard language Observation 44. For the naturall Queres I put to thee here concerning the nature of Light the Rainbow the Flux and Reflux of the Sea and the Load-stone I tell thee thou wilt never be able to answer sense to them unlesse thou turn Cartesian and explain them out of that Philosophy But in the Generall I mean That the heats which the Soul takes from personall admiration make her neither wise nor just nor good but onely disturbe the spirits and disadvantage Reason Observation 45. Page 81. line 2. Mastix would gladly put those asunder whom God hath put together You mean then that a Protestant and Christian are termini convertibiles What a rare Independent is Magicus he is an Independent of the Church of England which is as good sense as if he should say he is a Protestant of the Church of Rome Truly Magicus I think thou art an Independent in nothing but in thy Reasons and speeches for in them indeed there is no dependency at all They are Arena sine â—alce and hang together like thum-ropes of sand But before I be merry with thee and I fore-see I shall be when I come to thy verses hear this sober Aphorisme from me If that those things which are confessedly true in Christianity were closely kept to by men it would so fill and satisfie their souls with an inward glorious light and spirituall joy that all those things that are with destroying zeal and unchristian bitternesse prosecuted
ever come to passe in any one else 34 This David George a man of very low parentage was yet in the judgement of his very enemies one of notable naturall parts a comely person to look upon and of a gracefull presence He was also square of body yellow-bearded gray ey'd bright and shining grave and sedate in speech in a word all his motions gestures and demeanours were so decent and becoming as if he had been wholly composed to honesty and godlinesse He lived very splendidly and magnificently in his house and yet without the least stir or disorder He was a religious frequenter of the Church a liberall reliever of the poor a comfortable visiter of the sick obedient to the Magistrate kind and affable to all persons discreet in all things very cunning in some as in his closenesse and reservednesse in his Doctrine to those of Basil where he liv'd to whom he communicated not one Iota of it but yet he sedulously dispersed it in the further parts of Germany both by books and letters the main heads whereof you shall hear as follows 1. That the doctrine hitherto delivered by Moses the Prophets Christ himself and his Apostles is maimed and imperfect published onely to keep men in a childish obedience for a time till the fulnesse and perfection of David George his Doctrine should be communicated to the world which is the onely doctrine that can make man-kind happy and replenish them with the knowledge of God 2. That David George is the true Christ and Messias the dear Son of God born not of the flesh but of the holy Ghost and Spirit of Christ which God had reserved in a secret place his body being reduced to nothing and has infused it wholly into the soul of David George 3. That this David the Messias is to restore the house of Israel and reerect the Tabernacle of God not by the crosse afflictions and death as the other Messias but by that sweetnesse and love and grace that is given to him of his Father 4. That the power of remission of sins is given to this David George and that it is he that is now come to judge the world with the last judgement 5. That the holy Scriptures the sayings and testimonies of the Prophets of Christ and of his Apostles do all point if rightly understood in the true mystery of them to the glorious coming of David George who is greater then Christ himself as being born of the spirit and not of the flesh 6. That all sin and blasphemy against the Father or the Sonne may be remitted or pardoned but the sin against the holy Ghost that is against David George is never to be remitted 7. That the resurrection of Christ out of the grave and the resurrection of the dead is a meer mysterie or Allegorie 8. That Angels and Devils are onely good men and evil men or their Virtues and Vices 9. That Matrimony is free no obligation and that no man thereby is confined to one woman but that procreation of children shall be promiscuous or in common to all those that are born again or regenerated by the spirit of David George These things are recorded in the Life and Doctrine of David George published by the Rector and University of Basil 1559. 35. As for his own writings not a little admired by some his moving eloquence his powerfull animations to the great duties of Godlinesse I have already laid down such naturall Principles as they may be easily resolved into without any recourse to any supernaturaâ—l Spirit For a man illiterate as he was but of good parts by constant reading of the Bible will naturally contract a more winning and commanding Rhetorick then those that are learned the intermixture of tongues and of artificiall phrases debasing their style and making it sound more after the manner of men though ordinarily there may be more of God in it then in that of the Enthusiast 36. If he may with some zeal and commotion of mind recommend to hiâ— Reader Patience Peaceablenesse Meeknesse Brotherly kindnesse Equity Discretion Prudence Self-deniall Mortification and the like there is nothing in all this but what his own Sanguine temper may suggest without any inspiration from God For there is no Christian virtue to be named which concerns manners but Complexion will afford a spurious imitaâ—ion of it and therefore they answering in so near similitude one to another it will be an easie thing to colour over those meer Mock-graces with Scripture Phrases so that he that has but these complexionall Virtues and a Scripturall style amongst the lesse skilfull will look like an Apostle or Prophet but amongst the rude Multitude he may boast himself to be what he will without suspicion or contradiction The most unlikely of all these imitations is Self-deniâ—ll which seems abhorrent from a Sanguine temper But Enthusiasme is not without a mixture of Melancholyâ— and we are speaking now of Eâ—thusiastick Sanguine in which the fiercer Passions will also lodge and therefore this Self-denial Mortification may be nothing else but the Sanguines cenflict and victory over the most harsh and fierce Melancholy And that it is the Reign of Sanguine not the Rule of the Spirit is discoverable both from the complexion of the head of this sect as also from the general disposition of his followers and that tender love they bear to their own dear carkases who would not I dare say suffer the least aching of their little fingers by way of external Martyrdome for any Religion and therefore their prudence and discretion consists most in juglings aequivocatâ—ons and slight tergiversations peaceable compliances with anâ—thing rather then to suffer in body or goods which is the natural dictate of Sanguine triumphant which dominion yet seems far better then the Tyranny of Choler and Melancholy whose pragmatical ferocity can neither prove good to it selfe nor just to others beiâ—g prone to impose and as forward to avenge the refusal of every frivolous and impertinent foppery or abhorred falsitie with inhumane and cruel persecutions 37. Now that Sanguine was the complexion of David George the foregoing description of his person will probably intimate to any Physiognomer For it is very hard to finde an healthy body very comely and beautiful but the same proves more then ordinarily venereous and lustful We might instance in several both men and women Helena Lais Faustina Alcibiades Ismael Sophi of Persia and Demetrius who is said to have been of an admirable countenance and majestick graceful presence mingled with gravity and benignity also exceeding full of clemency justice piety and liberality but so libidâ—nous and volupâ—uous that no King was ever to be compared to him 38. But two surer signes are yet behind of this Prophets natural constitution which are His denying of a life to come and existence of Angels or Spirits and his allowing of plurality or community of wives The former whereof I must confesse I cannot so much impute to any
Prophecy and Inspiration We will adde also to these moderate exercise of Body and seasonable taking of the fresh aire a due and discreet use of Devotion whereby the Blood is ventilated and purged from dark oppressing vapors Which a temperate dyet if not fasting must also accompany or else the more hot and zealous our addresses are the more likely they are to bring mischief upon our own heads they raising the feculency of our intemperance into those more precious parts of the Body the Brains and animal Spirits and so intoxicating the mind with fury and wildnesse 53. By Humility I understand an entire Submission to the will of God in all things a Deadness to all self-excellency and preheminency before others a perfect Privation of all desire of singularity or attracting of the eyes of men upon a mans own person As little to relish a mans own praise or glory in the world as if he had never been born into it but to be wholly contented with this one thing that his will is a subduing to the will of God and that with thankfulnesse and reverence he doth receive what ever Divine Providence brings upon him be it sweet or sour with the hair or against it it is all one to him for what he cannot avoid it is the gift of God to the world in order to a greater good But here I must confesse That he that is thus affected as he seeks no knowledge to please himselfe so he cannot avoid being the most knowing man that is For he is surrounded with the beams of Divine wisdome as the low depressed Earth with the raies of the stars his deeply and profoundly humbled soul being as it were the Center of all heavenly illuminations as this little globe of the Earth is of those celestial influences I professe I stand amazed while I consider the ineffable advantages of a mind thus submitted to the Divine will how calm how comprehensive how quick and sensible she is how free how sagacious of how tender a touch and judgment she is in all things When as pride and strong desire ruffles the mind into uneven waves and boisterous fluctuations that the aeteranl light of Reason concerning either Nature or Life cannot imprint its perfect and distinct image or character there nor can so subtile and delicate motions and impressions be sensible to the understanding disturbed and agitated in so violent a storm That man therefore who has got this Humble frame of Spirit which is of so mighty concernment for acquiring all manner of wisdome as well Natural as Divine cannot possibly be so foolish as to be mistaken in that which is the genuine result of a contrary temper and such is that of Enthusiasme that puffs up men into an opinion that they have a more then ordinary influence from God that acts upon their Spirits and that he designes them by special appointment to be new Prophets◠new Law-givers new Davids new Messiasses and what not when it is nothing but the working of the Old man in them in a fanatical maner 54. By Reason I understand so setled and cautious a Composure of mind as will suspect every high flown and forward fancy that endevours to carry away the assent before deliberate examination she not enduring to be gulled by the vigour or garishnesse of the representation nor at all to be born down by the weight or strength of it but patiently to trie it by the known Faculties of the Soul which are either the Common notions that all men in their wits agree upon or the Evidence of outward Sense or else a cleer and distinct Deduction from these What ever is not agreable to these three is Fancy which testifies nothing of the Truth or Existence of any thing and therefore ought not nor cannot be assented to by any but mad men or fools And those that talk so loud of that higher Principle the Spirit with exclusion of these betray their own ignorance and while they would by their wilde Rhetorick disswade men from the use of their Rational faculties under pretence of expectation of an higher and more glorious Light do as madly in my mind as if a company of men travailing by night with links torches and lanthorns some furious Orator amongst them should by his wonderful strains of Eloquence so befool them into a misconceit of their present condition comparing of it with the sweet and cheerful splendor of the day that they should through impatience and indignation beat out their links and torches and break a pieces their lanthorns against the ground and so chuse rather to foot it in the dark with hazard of knocking their noses against the next Tree they meet and tumbling into the next ditch then to continue the use of those convenient lights that they had in their sober temper prepared for the safety of their journey But the Enthusiasts mistake is not onely in leaving his present guide before he has a better but in having a false notion of him he does expect For assuredly that Spirit of illumination which resides in the soules of the faithful is a Principle of the purest Reason that is communicable to the humane Nature And what this Spirit has he has from Christ as Christ himselfe witnesseth who is the eternal 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the all-comprehending Wisdome and Reason of God wherein he sees through the natures and Ideas of all things with all their respects of Dependency and Independency Congruity and Incongruity or what ever habitude they have one to another with one continued glance at once And what ever of Intellectual light is communicated to us is derived from hence and is in us Particular Reason or Reason in Succession or by peece-meal Nor is there any thing the holy Spirit did ever suggest to any man but it was agreeable to if not demonstrable from what we call Reason And to be thus perswaded how powerful a Curb it will be upon the exorbitant impressions and motions of Melancholy and Enthusiasme I leave it to any man to judge 55. To these three notable and more generall Helps we might adde some particular Considerations whereby we may keep off this Enthusiastical pertinacity from our selves or discover it when it has taken hold upon others As for example If any man shall pretend to the discovery of a Truth by inspiration that is of no good use or consequence to the Church of God it is to me little less then a Demonstration that he is Fanatical If he heaps up Falshoods as well as Truths and pretends to be inspired in all it is to me an evidence he is inspired in none of those my steries he offers to the world 56. There are certain advantages also that Enthusiasts have which are to be taken notice of whereby they have imposed upon many as That they have spoken very raisedly and divinely which most certainly has happened to sundry persons a little before they have grown stark mad and that they may hit
or a Miracle is most justly deemed to proceed from no supernaturall assistance but from some Hypochondriacall distemper 62. Moreover for these Rapturous and Enthusiasticall affections even in them that are truely good and pious it cannot be denied but that the fuell of them is usually naturall oâ—â—â—ntracted Melancholy which any man may perceive that is religious unlesse his Soul and Body be blended together and there be a confusion of all as it is in mistaken Enthusiasts that impute that to God which is proper to Nature But Melancholy usually disposes and the mind perfects the action through the power of the Spirit And a wise and holy man knows how to make use of his opportunity according to that Monition of the Apostle If a man be sad let him pray if cheerfull let him sing Psalmes 63. But there is also a peculiar advantage in Melancholy for divine speculations and yet the mysteries that result from thence are no more to be suspected of proving meer fancies because they may occasionally spring from such a constitution then Mathematicall Truths are who ow their birth to a Mathematicall complexion Which is as truly a complexion as the Religious complexion is and yet no sober man will deny the truth of her Theorems And as it would be a fond and improper thing to affirm that such a complexion teaches a man Mathematicks so it would also be to affirm that Melancholy is the onely mother of Religion 64. But most certain it is and observation will make it good That the souls of men while they are in these mortall bodies are as so many Prisoners immured in severall prisons with their fingle loop-holes looking into severall quarters and therefore are able to pronounce no further then their proper prospect will give them leave So the severall Complexions of mens bodies dispose or invite them to an easie and happy discovery of some things when yet notwithstanding if you conferre with them concerning other some that lie not within their prospect or the limits of their naturall Genius they will be enfâ—â—â—ed either to acknowledge their ignorance or if they will take upon them to judge which is the more frequent they will abundantly discover their errour and mistake Which sometimes seems so grosse and invincible that a man may justly suspect that they want not onely the patience but even the power of contemplating of some objects as being not able to frame any conception of what they are required to think of and such are the duller sort of Atheists that rank the notion of a Spirit and consequently of a God in the list of Inconsistencies and ridiculous Non-sense Wherein though they seek to reproach Religion they seem to me mainly to shame themselves their Atheisme being very easie to be paralleld with Enthusiasme in this regard For as some Enthusiasts being found plainly mad in some one thing have approved themselves sober enough in the rest so these Atheists though they show a tolerable wit and acutenesse in other matters yet approve themselves sufficiently slow and heavy in this FINIS OBSERVATIONS UPON Anthroposophia Theomagica And Anima Magica Abscondita By ALAZONOMASTIX PHILALETHES Psalm They reel to and fro and stagger like a drunken man and are at their wits end LONDON Printed by I. Flesher 1655. To Eugenius Philalethes the Author of Anthroposophia Theomagica and Anima Magica Abscondita SIR THE Great deserved fame that followed this noble work of yours the due recompense of all eminent performances engaged me to peruse the same with much eagerness of mind and yet with no lesse attention I being one of those that professe themselves much more willing to learn then able to teach And that you may see some specimen of the fruits of your labour and my proficiency I thought fit to present you with these few Observations Which considering the barrennesse of the Matrix as you Chymists love to call it in which they were conceived may be termed rather many then few And that imputed to the alone virtue or Magicall Multiplication or Theomagical fecundity of your Divine Writings not at all to the sterility of my disfurnished Braine Which now notwithstanding having gathered both warmth and moisture from the heat and luxuriancy of your youthfull fansie findes it selfe after a manner transformed into your own complexion and translated into the same temper with your selfe In so much that although I cannot with the height of a protestation in the presence of my glorious God as your selfe has gallantly done in pag. 50. lin 17. of Anthropos Theomag affirme that the affection and zeale to the truth of my Creatour has forced mee to write yet I dare professe in the word of an honest man that nothing but an inplacable enmity to immorality and foolery has moved me at this time to set Pen to Paper And I confesse my indignation is kindled the more having so long observed that this disease is growne even Epidemicall in our Nation viz. to desire to be filled with high-swolne words of Vanity rather then to feed on sober Truth and to heate and warme our selves rather by preposterous and fortuitous imaginations then to move cautiously in the light of a purified minde and improved Reason Wherefore I being heightned with the same Zeale of discountenancing of Vanitie and conceitednesse that your selfe is of promoting the Truth you will permit to me the same freedome in the prosecution thereof For as we are growne neare akin in temper and complexion so we ought mutually to allow each other in our Actings alike according to our common Temper and Nature and the accustomed Liberty of the Philalethean Family In confidence whereof till wee meete againe in the next Page I take leave and subscribe my selfe A Chip of the same Block Alazonomastix Philalethes Observations upon Anthroposophia Theomagica and Anima Magica Abscondita SECT I. Eugenius taxed of vain glory Three main ways he atempts to approve himself an extraordinary knowing man to the world His affectation of seeming a Magician discovered in his so highly magnifying Agrippa in the dress of his Title-page and his submissive address to the Rosie-brotherhood His indiscreet exprobration of ignorance to the Aristoteleans for not knowing the very essence or substance of the Soule His uncivil calling Aristotle an Ape and ignorant taxation of his School concerning the frame of the world The disproportionable Delineation of Eugenius his World-Animal and his unjust railing against Aristotles writings which he uncivilly tearms his Vomit ANd now brother Philalethes that we are so well met let us begin to act according to the freenesse of our tempers and play the Tom Tell-troths And you indeed have done your part already My course is next Which must be spent in the Observations I told you of upon those profound Treatises of yours Anthroposophia Theomagica and Anima Magica Abscondita And my first and general Observation is this That the genius of my brother Eugenies magical Discourse is such that Magus-like
and put off your vizard and be aperâ— and intelligible or else why do you pretend to lay the Fundamentalls of Science and crave our diligence and attention to a non-significant noise and buâ—ze Unlesse you will be understood it may as well for ought any bodie knows be a plaister for a gauld horses back or a Medicine for a Mad-dog as a receipt of the Philosophers Stone Observation 29. Pag. 27. In this page Magicus prophesies of a vitrification of the Earth and turning of it into a pure diaphanous substance To what end Magicus That the Saints and Angels at each pole of the Earth may play at Boe-peep with one another through this crystallized Globe Magicus has rare imaginations in his noddle Observation 30. Pag. 28. At the end of this page Magicus begins to take to task the explication of mans nature But Magicus you must first learn better to know your self before you attempt to explain the knowledge of man to others Observation 31. Pag. 29. Lin. 10. The Philosophicall Medicine This is the Philosophers stone And they that are ignorant in this point are but Quacks and Pispot Doctours Ho! Dr. H. Dr. P. Dr. R. Dr. T. and as many Doctours more as will stand betwixt London and Oxenford if you have not a sleight of Art to Metamorphize your selves into Triorchises and have one stone more then Nature hath bestowed upon you which is forsooth the Philosophers Stone have amongst you blind Harpers Magicus will not stick to teem Urinals on your heads and crown you all one after another with the Pispot and honour you with the Title of Quack-salvers What Magicus Is it not sufficient that you have no sense nor wit but you will have no good manners neither Observation 32. Pag. 30. This thirtieth page teaches that the Soul of man consists of two parts Ruach and Nephesh one Masculine and the other Feminine And Anthroposophus is so tickled with the Application of the conceit unto Marriage which he very feelingly and savourly pursues that he has not the patience to stay to tell us how these two differ he being taken up so with that powerfull charm and thence accrewing Faculty of Crescite Multiplicamini Observation 33. Pag. 31. This page has the Legend that the Alcoran has concerning the envy of the Angels But all goes down alike with him as if every thing printed were Gospel In so much that I am perswaded that he doubts not but that every syllable of his own Book is true now it has passed the Pâ—esse SECT V. 34. Eugenius broaches an old truth for a new doctrine 35. His errour that the sensitive part in man is a portion of Anima Mundi 36. His rash rejection of Peripateticall forms 37. His odde conceit of blind mens seeing in their sleep 38. And of the flowers of Hearbs framed like eyes having a more subtile perception of heat and cold then other parts of them have 39. His distinguishing the Rationall or Angelicall spirit in man from the Sensitive 40. Mastix commends Eugenius for his generous discourse of the excellency of the Soul 41. Rebukes him for his enmity with the Peripateticks and School-Divines and for his rash swearing and protesting solemnly before God that he wrote onely out of Zeal to the truth of his Creatour 42. Checkâ— his bold entitling of his own writings to the Sacrosanctity of Mysteries 43. Taxes his vain idolizing of Agâ—ippa 44. Shows him the fruitlesse effects of Enthusiastick Poetry without the true knowledge of things 45. Approves of severall collections of his concerning God and the Soul but disallows of his rash censure of Aristotles Philosophy challenging him to show any solution of Philosophick controversies by his Chymicall experiments 46. Sports himself with his solicitude of what acceptance his writings will have in the world 47. As also with his modest pride in disclaiming all affectation of Rhetorick 48. And his lanck excuse in that he wrote in the dayes of his mourning for the death of his brother 49. His ridiculous Tergiversation in not submitting his writings to the censure of any but God alone Observation 34. Pag. 32. THis page ridiculously places Peter Ramus amongst the Schoolmen against all Logick and Method And at the last line thereof bids us arrigere aures and tells he will convey some truth never heretofore discovered viz. That the Sensitive gust in a man is the forbidden fruit with the rest of the circumstances thereof Which Theory is so farre from being new that it is above a thousand years old It is in Origen and every where in the Christian Platonists Observation 35. Pag. 38. Lin. 27. It is part of Anima Mundi Why is Anima Mundi which you say in men and beasts can see feel tast and smell a thing divisible into parts and parcells Take heed of that Anthroposophus lest you crumble your own soul into Atoms indeed make no soul but all body Observation 36. Pag. 39. Lin. 22. Blind Peripateticall forms What impudence is this O Magicus to call them so unlesse you make your Anima Mundi more intelligible This is but to rail at pleasure not to teach or confute Observation 37. Pag. 40. Lin. 2. As it is plain in dreams Blind men then see in their sleep it seems which is more then they can do when they are awake Are you in jest Eugenius or in good earnest If you be I shall suspect you having a faculty to see when you are asleep that you have another trick too that is to dream when you are awake Which you practised I conceive very much in the compâ—lement of this book there being more dreams then truth by farre in it Observation 38. Lin. 11. Represent the eyes How fanciful and poeticall are you Mr. Magicus I suppose you allude to the herb Euphrasia or Eyebright Which yet sees or feels as little light or heat of the Sun as your soul do's of reason or humanity Observation 39. Lin. 27. Angelicall or rationall spirit Do's not this see and hear too in man If it do not how can it judge of what is said or done If it do's then there are two hearing and seeing souls in a man Which I will leave to Anthroposophus his own thoughts to find out how likely that is to be true Observation 40. 46 47 48 49. Pages Truly Anthroposophus these pages are of that nature that though you are so unkind to Aristotle as to acknowlege nothing good in him yet I am not so inveterate a revengefull assertor of him but I will allow you your lucida intervalla What you have delivered in these pages concerning the Soul of man bating a few Hyperboles might become a man of a more settled brain than Anthroposophus But while you oppose so impetuously what may with reason be admitted and propound so magisterially what is not sense I must tell you Anthroposophus that you betray to scorn and derision even those things that are sober in the way that you affect
wink at and will deal with you onely about those things that you produce and oppose Observation 2. Pag. 3. Lin. 19. Nature is a Principle Here you cavil that Nature is said to be a Principle because you cannot find out the thing defined by this general intimation But here Philalethes you are a pitiful Logician and know not so much in Logick as every Freshman in our University doth viz. that that part of the Definition which is general do's not lead us directly home unto the thing defined and lay our hand upon it but it is the difference added that do's that As if so be we should say onely that Homo est animal that assertion is so floating and hovering that our mind can settle on nothing which it may safely take for a man for that general notion belongs to a slea or a mite in a chees as well as to a man but adding rationale then it is determined and restrained to the nature of man And your allegation against the difference here annexed in the definition of Nature is as childish For you only alleadge that it tels us what nature do's not what it is My dear Philalethes Certainly thou hast got the knack of seeing further into a millstone then any mortal else Thou hast discovered as thou thinkest Dame Nature stark naked as Actaeon did Diana but for thy rash fancy deservest a pair of Asses ears as well as he did his Bucks-horns for his rash sight Can any substantial form be known otherwise then by what it can do or operate Tell me any one substantial form that thou knowest any better way then this Phillida solus habeto take Phillis to thy self and her black-bag to boot Thou art good Anthroposophus I perceive a very unexperienced novice in the more narrow and serious search and contemplation of things Observation 3. Pag. 4. Lin. 23. This is an expresse of the office and effect of formes but not of their substance or essence Why Philalethes as I said before have you ever discovered the naked substance or Essence of any thing Is colour light hardnesse softnesse c. is any of these or of such like essence substance it selfe if you be so great a Wizard show some one substantial form in your Theomagical glasse Poor Kitling how dost thou dance and play with thine own shadow and understandest nothing of the mystery of substance and truth Observation 4. Pag. 5. Here in the third place you cavil at Aristotles Definition of the Soul and by your slubbering and barbarous translating of the term 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 smother the fitnesse of the sense What more significant of the nature of a Soul then what this term 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is compounded of viz. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Totamque infâ—sa per artus Mens agitat molem Or if we read the word as Cicero 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 it wil be more significant as being made up of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 And that which do's inwardly pervade and penetrate that which do's hold together and yet move this way and that way and lastly still moving possess and command an organical body c. what is this but a Soul or what better Definition can be given of it then this But here this peremptory opposer do's still inculcate the same cavil that the naked substance or essence of the soul is not set out by this but its operations But still out of the same ignorance supposing that a substantial Form can be better known then by its proper operations And this ignorance of his makes him so proud that he does Fellow at every word if not Sirrah Prince Aristotle because he has not done that which is impossible to doe unbare to us the very substance of the Form What an imperious boy is this a wrangling child in Philosophy that screams and cries after what is impossible as much as peevish babes after what is hurtful Aud in this humorous straining and wrigling bemarres both his Mother and his Aunt both the Universities at once casting dirt and filth upon their education of youth as if they taught nothing because they cannot teach what is impossible to be learned Observation 5. Pag. 8. Here Anthroposophus begins to be something earnest and rude with Nature not content any longer to use his adulterous phansie but to break open with his immodest hands her private closet search her Cabinet and pierce into her very Center What rare extractions he will make thence I leave to himselfe to enjoy Sure I am that if any skilful Cook or Chymist should take out Philalethes brains and shred them as small as mincemeat and tumble them never so much up and down with a trencher-fork he would not discover by this diligent discussion any substantial Form of his brains whereby they may be discovered from what lies in a Calfs head Nay if they were stewed betwixt two dishes or distilled in an Alembek neither would that extraction be any crystalline mirror to see the substantial form stark naked in and discover the very substance of that spirit that has hit upon so many unhappy hallucinations But you are a youth of rare hopes Anthroposophus Observation 6. Pag. 9. Lin. 20. Where by the way I must tell you c. viz. That the Heavens are not moved by Intelligences Who cannot tell us that But indeed you are forward to tell us any thing that do's but seem to sound high or make any show There 's no body now but would laugh to hear that a particular Angell turns about every Orb as so many dogs in wheels turn the spit at the fire So that it seems far below such a grand Theomagician as you are to tell us such incredible fopperies as these to be false Observation 17. Lin. 10. For the Authours credit and benefit of the Reader Good Philalethes What credit do you expect from your scribling though it be the onely thing you aim at in all your Book when yet nothing of truth but this aim of yours is to be understood throughout all this writing Observation 8. Lin. 15. This Anima retain'd in the Matter and missing a vent c. A similitude I suppose taken from the bung-hole of a barrell or more compendiously from bottled bear or it may be from the corking up close the urine of a bewitched party and setting it to the fire For Anthroposophus will not be lesse then a Magician in all things nor seem lesse wise then or witch or devil But me thinks Anthroposophus your expression of the nature of this Anima that must do such fine feats in the world by the efformation of things and organizing the matter into such usefull figuration and proportion in living creatures had been as fitly and as much to your purpose expressed if you had fancied her tied up like a pig in poke that grunting and nudling to get out drove the yielding bag
out at this corner and that corner and so gave it due order and disposition of parts But O thou man of mysteries tell me I pray thee how so so subtil a thing as this Anima is can be either barrel'd up or bottled up or tied up in a bag as a pig in a poke when as the first materiall rudiments of life be so lax and so fluid how can they possibly hopple or incarcerate so thin and agil a substance as a Soul so that the union betwixt them is of some other nature then what such grosse expressions can represent and more Theomagicall then our Theomagician himself is aware of Observation 9. Pag. 11. Here Anthroposophus tells us rare mysteries concerning the Soul that it is a thing stitched and cobled up of two parts viz. of aura tenuissima and lux simplicissima And for the gaining of credence to this patched conceit he abuses the authority of that excellent Platonist and Poet Virgilius Maro taking the fag end of three verses which all tend to one drift but nothing at all to his purpose AEneid 6. Donec longa dies perfecto temporis orbe Concretam exemit labem purumque reliquit AEthereum sensum atquo aurai simplicis ignem This is not spoken of the Soul it self but of the AEthereall Vehicle of the Soul and so is nothing to your purpose Mr. Philalethes You tell us also in this page in what shirts or sheets the Souls wrap themselves when they apply to generation as your phrase is as if you were Groom of their bed-chamber if not their Paâ—der You tell us also of a radicall vitall liquor that is of like proportion and complexion with the superiour interstellar waters which is as learnedly spoken as if you should compare the Sack at the Globe-Tavern with certain supernall Wine-bottles hung round Orions girdle Which no man were able to smell out unlesse his nose were as Atlantick as your rauming and reaching fancy And yet no man that has not lost his reason but will think this as grave a truth in Philosophie as your interstellar waters But Interstellar indeed is a prettie word and sounds well and it is pitie but there were some fine Philosophick notion or other dld belong to it But now Philalethes if I would tyrannize over you as you do over Aristotle for the manner of your declaring the nature of the Soul where you pretend to shew us the very naked essence of it and first principles whereof it doth consist you have laid your self more bare to my lash then you endeavoured to lay bare the Soul to our view for you do plainly insinuate to us That either the Soul is Light or else a thin Air or that it is like to them If onely like these bodies of Light and Air how pitifully do you set out the nature of the Soul when you tell us the principles of it onely in a dry metaphor Is not the nature of the Soul far better known from the proper operations thereof as Aristotle has defined it then from this fantasticall metaphoricall way But if you will say that the Soul is properly Light or Air then be they never so thin or never so simple unlesse you will again use a metaphor the Soul must be a Body And how any corporeall Substance thick or thin fluid or dry can be able to think to reason to fancy c. nay to form matter into such cunning and wise frames and contrivancies as are seen in the bodies of living Creatures no man of lesse ignorance and confidence then your self will dare to endeavour to explain or hold any way probable Observation 10. Pag. 12. In this page you are curiously imployed in making of a Chain of Light and Matter surely more subtill and more uselesse then that that held the Flea prisoner in the Mechanicks hand But this is to hold the Anima the passive Spirit and celestiall Water together Our Theomagician here grows as imperious as wrathfull Xerxes Will you also fetter the Hellespont Philalethes and binde the winde and waters in chains Buc let 's consider now the link of this miraculous chain of his Light Matter Anima of 3 of 1 portions Passive spirit of 2 of 2 portions Celestiall waters of 1 of 3 portions This is your chain Philalethes Now let 's see what Apish tricks you 'll play with this your chain The three portions of light must be brought down by the two the two if not indeed five the two and three being now joyn'd brought down by one and so the whole chain drops into the water But would any Ape in a chain if he could speak utter so much incredible and improbable stuff with so much munky and mysterious ceremony His very chain would check his both thoughts and tongue For is it not farre more reasonable that three links of a chain should sway down two and two or five one then that one should sway two or five or two three Or do we find when we fling up a clod of earth that the whole ball of the Earth leaps up after that clod or the clod rather returns back to the Earth the greater ever attracting the lesse if you will stand to magneticall Attraction But truly Philalethes I think you do not know what to stand to or how to stand at all you are so giddy and intoxicated with the steam and heat of your disturbed fancie and vain minde Observation 11. Pag. 13. Lin. 8. But me thinks Nature complains of a prostitution c. Did not I tell you so before that Philalethes was a pander and now he is convinced in his own conscience and confesses the crime and his eares ring with the clamours and complaints of Madam Nature whom he has so lewdly prostituted Sad Melancholist thou art affrighted into the confession of crimes that thou art not onely not guilty of but canst not be guilty of if thou wouldst Is there never a one of our Citie Divines at leasure to comfort him and compose him I tell thee Madam Nature is a far more chast and discreet Lady then to lie obnoxious to thy prostitutions These are nothing but some unchast dreams of thy prurient and polluted fancie I dare quit thee of this fact Philalethes I warrant thee Thou hast not laid Madam Nature so naked as thou supposest onely thou hast I am afraid dream'd uncleanly and so hast polluted so many sheets of paper with thy Nocturnall Conundrums which have neither life sense nor shape head nor foot that I can find in them SECT II. 12. That Spiders and other brute creatures have knowledge in them from the first Intellect 13. That the Seminall Forms of things are knowing and discerning Spirits 14. That the World is from God and all true wisdome which is to be found by experiments not in Aristotles writings 15. Because of the abuse of Logick he takes up the Letanâ—e of St. Augustine 16. His three Magicall Principles viz. The first created Unity the Binarius or
fit to judge of reason as if your heads were stuffed with wet straw These things hath the divine Indignation uttered against you but more for reproof then reproach But your sinne hath made you sottish and your sottishnesse confident and secure But his anger burns against you O you false Religionists and the wrath of God will overtake you when you are not aware and your shame shall ascend up like the smoke of the bottomlesse pit and your stink shall be as the filthinesse in the valley of the children of Hinnom This will be the portion of all those that barter away sound reason and the sober faculties of the soul for boisterous words of vanity and unsetled conceits of Enthusiasts that having neither reason nor Scripture nor conspicuous miracle row down with the stream of mens corruptions and ripen and hasten the unclean part in man to a more full and speedy birth of sinne and ungodlinesse But what 's all this to me saith Philalethes I tell thee Phil. I neither wrote before nor do I now write onely for thy sake but for as many as my writings may reach for their good Nor am I out of my wits as some may fondly interpret me in this divine freedome But the love of God compelled me Nor am I at all Philalethes Enthusiasticall For God doth not ride me as a horse and guide me I know not whither my self but converses with the as a friend and speakâ— to me in such a Dialect as I understand fully can make others understand that have not made shipwrack of the faculties that God hath given them by superstition or sensuality for with such I cannot converse because they do not converse with God but onely pity them or am angry with them as I am merry and pleasant with thee For God hath permitted to me all these things and I have it under the broad seal of Heaven Who dare charge me God doth acquit me For he hath made me full Lord of the four elements and hath constituted me Emperour of the world I am in the fire of choler and am not burned In the water of phlegme and am not drowned In the aiery sanguint and yet not blown away with every blast of transient pleasure or false doctrines of men I descend also into the sad earthy Melancholy and yet am not buryed from the sight of my God I am Philalethes though I dare say thou takest me for no bird of Paradise Incola coeli in terra an inhabitant of Paradise and Heaven upon Earth and the white stone is mine however thou scramblest for the Philosophers stone I wish thou hadst them both that is all the harm I wish thee I still the raging of the sea I clear up the sowring Heavens and with my breath blow away the clouds I sport with the beasts of the Earth the Lion licks my hand like a Spaniell and the Serpent sleeps upon my lap and stings me not I play with the fowls of Heaven and the birds of the Air sit singing on my fist All the Creation is before me and I call every one of them by their proper names This is the true Adam O Philalethes This is Paradise Heaven and Christ. All these things are true in a sober sense And the Dispensation I live in is more happinesse above all measure then if thou couldst call down the Moon so near thee by thy Magick charms that thou mightest kisse her as she is said to have kissed Endymion or couldest stop the course of the Sunne or which is all one with one stamp of thy foot stay the motion of the Earth All this externall power in Nature were but as a shop of trinkets and toyes in comparison of what I have declared unto you And an adulterous generation onely seeks after a signe or idiots such as love to stare on a dexterous jugler when he playes his tricks And therefore they being of so little consideration in themselves I see and am satisfied why miracles are no more frequent in the world God intends an higher dispensation and greater happinesse for these later times wherein Divine Love and Reason and for their sakes Liberty will lay claim to the stage For He will as I told you draw us with the cords of a man not ride us as with a bridle-like a horse or tug us along like a mad stear in a band He will sanctifie our inward faculties and so take possession of the Earth But that a man may not deplore what is lamentable or be angry at what is injurious to God or Goodness or laugh at what is ridiculous this is not any part of that Law that is made manifest in the Heavenly life but the arbitrarious precepts of supercilious Stoicks or surly Superstitionists For God hath sanctified and will sanctifie all these things Nor am I at all mad or fanatick in all this O you unexperienced and unwise For as our Saviour said of his body Touch me and handle me so say I of my soul feel and try all the faculties of it if you can find any crack or flaw in them Where is my Reason inconsequent or inconsistent with the Attributes of God the common Notions of men the Phaenonema of Nature or with it self Where is my Fancie distorted unproportionate unproper But for the bottome of all these that I confesse you cannot reach to nor judge of that is divine sense the white stone in which there is a name written that none can read but he that hath it But for the guidance of my reason and imagination they have so safe a Stearsman viz. that Divine touch of my soul with God and the impregnation of my Understanding from the most High that judgement and caution have so warily built the outward fabric of words and fancy that I challenge any man to discover any ineptitude in them or incoherencie And now verily the serious consideration of these weighty matters hath so composed my mind that I find it some difficultie to discompose it into a temper childish enough to converse with my young Eugenius But as high as I have taken my station I will descend and go lesse my self to bring him to what is greater Behold I leap down as from the top of some white rocky cloud upon the grassie spot where my Philalethes stands and I shall now begin the game of my personated Enmitie or sportfull Colluctation with him SECT III. Eugenius his skill in Grammar Rhetorick and Logick That an Essentiall definition doth not pretend to set out to us the very naked substance of the thing defined That the frame of the World is not like the inanimate frame of an house according to the Aristoteleans Mastix his excuse for the manner of writing against Eugenius from his want of knowledge of either his name or person His Further justification of himself from the warrantable end of his enterprise His dexterous discovery of the grand folly of his vaunting Adversary and serious exhortation to him
And truly I know not whether I should pity thee or laugh at thy childish Ars but thou hast given thy self For thou railest at me now thou art down and threatnest him that is ready to set thee up upon thy feet provided thou wilt not prick up thy eares too and look too spruntly upon the businesse But thou wantest no help thou art a Giant an invincible man of warre great Goliah of Gaâ—h I a meer Punie as thou callest me nay a Munkey a Mouse What dost thou bid defiance to three at once Philalethes I tell thee any one of these three would be hard enough for thee But what wilt thou do now thou art to deal with a man For I shall fight with thee onely with a mans weapon Reason As for thy railings and quibblings I shall not take notice of them so that the battel is likely to be the sharper shorter for it Onely let 's be a little merry at the beginning it will be like shaking of hands at the taking up of the cudgells SECT V. Mastix makes himself merry with Eugenius upon his abuse of the Argument of one of the Cantoes of his Poems That Reminiscency is no proof for the Praeexistencie of the Soul That Eugenius is enforced to acknowledge the two Aristotelean principles Matter and Privation His ridiculous mistake of finding out and seeing the first Matter Observation 1. ARt thou the hobling Poet who sometime Prays'd with his quill Plato's Philosophie I am the Poet that did and do with my pen my mouth and from my heart praise that excellent Philosophy of Plato as the most consistent and coherent Metaphysicall Hypothesis that has yet been found out by the wit of man But why hobling Poet thou hobling Asse or Hobby-horse choose thee whether Thou hast so diseased and crazie a brain that it cannot endure it seems the least jottingâ— and so thou hadst rather be carried in a Sedan as those that are rotten with the Neapolitan disease or else going the way to it then be bravely hurryed in my open magnificent chariot whose tempestuous wheels dance and leap while they are wearing down the cragginesse and asperity of Philosophick difficulties into plainnesse and easinesse But I know the vulgar those poor Merchants of Eel-skins that deal with nothing but the Exuvia of things words and phrases are more taken with smooth Non-sense or superficiall flourishes then with the deepest knowledge in a carelesse dresse Dost thou not know that those men that make it their businesse to be compt and elegant in their clothes and carriages commonly have little else but this in them And so it is too often with Poems and other writings But how I slight your simple censures O ye skin-sucking flies ye wasps with rush stings in your tayls ye winged inhabitants of Crowland I will shew you now not in the prose of More but in the very Trot and Loll of Spencer as this Naturall with his tongue lolling out of his driveling mouth uncivilly calls it As gentle Shepherd in sweet Eventide When ruddy Phoebus 'gins to welk in West High on an hill his flock to viewen wide Marks which do bite their hasty supper best A cloud of cumb'rous Gnats do him molest All striving to infix their feeble stings That from their ' noyance he no where can rest But with his clownish hands their tender wings He brusheth oft and oft doth marre their murmurings Nor have I here called my self Clown by craft no more then the Poet calls the Knight so But thy indiscreet wit cannot distinguish betwixt the Formale and Materiale of that whence the similitude is fetched which made thee so ill digest my Philosophick Bacon It was thine own Magick Phil. or perverse imagination that turned thee into an Hog with tusks and bristles not I. But to return to the businesse O thou judicious Critick What is the fault where is the flaw in what thou hast recited Praise with my quill Plato's Philosophy Thou dost onely play wich the feather of the quill But for what is writ with the inky end thereof in those Poems of mine I challenge thee to shew me if thou canst where my fancy or reason hath really tript Thou indeed hast attempted something in the Platonick way but I have made it manifest thou hast writ with the quill of a goose But I have penned down the praise of Plato's Philosophy in this Canto with the skill of a man as any man that hath skill will acknowledge But thy spirit is not yet prepared for the knowledge of such divine matters It is not yet fine gentle and benigne enough to receive so delicious impressions Put thy soul into a crysiple O pragmaticall Chymist and set it on that fire that will excoct and purge out thy drosse and then judge of Platonisme Art not thou the Chymicall Monkey that art very busie to little purpose about the glasses of H. Blunden an honest man and an happy Operatour in Chymistrie as I hear But thou dost nothing but lear and look up at the reek of the furnace and sendest as high Theomagicall meditations after every fold or curle of smoke that mounteth up as the musing Ape after the flur and farre flight of every partridge he let out of the basket But enough of Levity Now to expiate the excesse of this mirth with something more solid and sober I am ready to answer what thou alledgest and to make good that my first Observation is no oversight Thou art here mistaken in two things First in that thou conceivest that Reminiscency is so strong an argument to prove the Preexistency of the soul before her entrance into the body I say it is not any argument worth the insisting upon For though the Soul do finde truth in her self questions being wisely proposed to her yet she doth not perceive that she ever thoughâ— of those things before and therefore cannot acknowledge any such Reminiscency in herself And I appeal unto thine own reason Eugenius if God should create an humane soul and put it into a body fit and complyable with contemplation whether that Soul would not be able to answer all the questions propounded in Plato's Meno as well as those that are supposed to preexist And therefore I have not made use of this argument in all my Platonical Poems For I tell thee Phil. I am a very wary Philosopher and he must rise betimes that goes about to impose upon my reason Thy second mistake is that thou thinkest I condemn thy opinion of the Preexistency of the soul which indeed I might well do as personating an Aristotelean But what I really blame there is thy boldnesse and disadvantagious rashnesse in the proposall of it thou intimating as if the soul descended into the body with her eyes broad awake which the first page of thy Praeface to the Reader doth plainly imply Let any one read and judge But if any one ask what my opinion is I answer It is no matter what my opinion
by this and that Church would look all of them as contemptibly as so many rush-candles in the light of the Sun Line 15. You fall on my person Well I 'le let your person go now and fall on your Poetry Where I believe I shall prove you a notable wagge indeed and one that ha's abused your mother Oxford and all her children very slyly and dryly Dry Punick statues You make your own brothers of Oxford then so many dry Pumices things that have no sap or juice in them at all I wish you had been so too Phil for you have been to me a foul wet Spunge and have squeazed all your filth upon my person as you call it But if thou knewest how reall a friend I am to thy person excesse of kindnesse would make thee lick it all off again Might make a marble weep to bear your verse It seems then by you that those of Oxford make such dull heavy verses that it would make a Monument of Marble like an overladen Asse weep to bear the burden of them Shee heav'd your fancies What heavy leaden fancies are these that want such heaving Up heavy heels But how high did she heave them Phil As high as the other lead was heaved that covers the roof of your Churches and Chappels Nay higher Above the very Pinacles Mastix She heaved your fancies higher then the pride of all her pinnacles A marvellous height but the Jack-Daws of our University sit higher then thus so it seems that the souls of the sonnes of your Mother Oxford are elevated according to your Poetry as high as the bodies of the Jack-daws in the University of Cambridge What large elevated fancies have your Academicks that reach almost as â—arre as the eye and sense of an ordinary Rustick Your phansie's higher then the Pinnacles his sight higher then the Clouds for he may see the Sunne and the Starres too if he be not blind Go thy wayes Phil for an unmercifull wit I perceive thou wilt not spare neither Father Presbyter as thou callest him nor thy Mother nor thine own Brothers but thou wilt break thy jest upon them Well I now forgive thee heartily for all thy abuses upon me I perceive thou wilt not spare thy dearest friends Observation 47. Thou art not well acquainted with Gold thou art not a man of that Mettall Here Magicus thy want of Logick hath made thee a little witty For if thou hadst understood that Comparison doth not alwayes imply any positive degree in the things compared this conceit had been stifled before the birth Thou saist somewhere that I am a thin lean Philosopher but I say I am as fat as a hen is on the forehead Whether do I professe my self lean or fat now As lean as thou dost Now when I say as Orient as false gold do I say that false gold is Orient Thou art a meer Auceps syllabarum Magicus or to look lower a Mouse-catcher in Philosophy Observation 48. Philalethes say you writ this book to revenge his death No Now I think you mention his death onely to bring this latine sentence into your Book Et quis didicit scribere in lucta lacrymarum Atramenti Observation 49. I excluded not thy censure but thy mercy Thy words are I expose it not to the mercy of man but of God But it is no exposall or hardship at all to be exposed to mercy therefore by mercy thou must needs understand censure Page 86. line 2. You skud like a dogge by Nilus Here your fancy is handsome and apposite to what you would expresse but that which you would expresse is false For I fear no Crocodile but the fate of AEsops dog who catching at the shadow lost the substance Because I more then suspect that there is nothing reall in those places I passed by but onely tremulous shadows of an unsettled fancy Page 87. line 21. Did not I bid thee proceed to the censure of each part What is your meaning Philalethes That you would have me confute all right or wrong No Phil I have done as S. George in his combate with the Drogon thrust my spear under the Monsters wing into the parts which are most weak or least scaly What I have excepted against was with judgement and reason and so good that all that I have said hitherto stands as strong and unshaken of thy weak reasonings and impotent raylings as rocks of Adamant and Pillars of Brasse at the shooting off of a Childes Eldern-Gunne against them Let 's now see how like a Man thou hast quit thy self in the ensuing Discourse Anima Magica Abscondita SECT IX The shrimpishnesse of the second part of Eugenius his Answer His maimâ—d definition of Nature That Form is not known otherwise then by its operations Of the union of the Soul with the Body That the Soul is not Intelligent Fire prov'd by sundry arguments WEll Eugenius I have now perused this second part of thy Answer which doth not answer at all in proportion to thy first How lank how little is it Thou hast even wearyed thy self with scolding and now thou art so good natured as to draw to an end Faint Phil Faint let me feel thy pulse Assuredly it strikes a Myurus which is a signe thou art languid at the heart Or is thy book troubled with the Cramp and so hath its leggs twitch'd up to its breech or hath it been on Procrustes his bed and had the lower parts of it cut off Whatever the Cause is the Effect is apparent that thou art wrinkled up at the end like a Pigs tayl and shriveled on heaps like a shred of parchment How many sober passages of Morality How many weighty Arguments of Reason How many Froliâ—ks of wit hast thou slipt over and not so much as mentioned much lesse applyed any sutable answer But I hope thou wilt make good use of them silently with thy self and rectifie thy fancy hereafter by my judgement though thou thinkest it as harsh as standing on the Presbyteriall stool to give me publick thanks In the mean time Reader be contented that I onely reply to what he hath thought good to oppose But what he runnes away from so cowardly I will not run after him with it nor be so cruel as to force him to abide Observation 1. Page 91. line 9. It is plain then that the body and substance of the definition is contained in these few words Principium motûs quietis Why Magicus because you make up the rest with thinking Suppose thy Picture were drawn to the waste thou thoughtest of the rest of thy body Doth that picture therefore contain the full draught of thy body Away thou Bird of Athens Observation 2. You tell me a form cannot be known otherwise then by what it can do or operate I told thee so Phil and do tell thee so again And thou onely deniest it thou dost not disprove it wherefore Phyllis is mine yet and not the willow Garland but the
willow Rod is thine for not learning this plain lesson any better all this while For to speak to thy own sense and conceit of the Soul that it is an Intelligent Fire or Light thou canst not frame any notion of Intelligent but from intellectuall operations nor of Light but from what it operates upon thy sense thy sight which is a truth most evidently plain to any man that is not stark blind Page 92. line 5. You say Mastix I have not considered the difference added in the definition of Nature No You had not when you cavilled at the Genus as angry at it because it did not monopolize the whole office of the definition to it self and supply also the place of a Difference Fond Cavil But thou supposed'st it seems that I would never deigne to answer so unclean an Adversary as thou hast shown thy self and that thy Readers would never take the pains to see whether thou spoke true or false and that hath made thee say any thing that with undaunted confidence and foulest insultations that the simple might be sure to belieue thee without any more ado Eugenius enjoy thou the applause of the simple 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 But one wise man to me is as much as ten thousands of such and infinite swarms of them not so much as one I am fully of Heraclitus his mind for that Philalethes Observation 3. Here Philalethes you contemning Definitions made from the proper Operations of the things defined I intimate to you that you necessarily imply that you look after the knowledge of a stark-naked substance which is impossible ever to be had What do you answer to this Nothing Let the Reader judge else Observation 4. Let any body compare thy Finihabia with the expositions of those terms 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 made by Iulius Scaliger for it is he that is more cunning at nonsense then the devil not I and he shall find that thou hast spent a page and an half here to no purpose but onely to shew some few faint flashes of wit For at last thou dost acknowledge the aptnesse and significancie of the words but still complainest that there is no news of the substance of the soul in them To which I answer again A substance is a thing impossible to be knoâ—n otherwise then by its proper operations or peculiar relations to this or that as I have often inculcated But how do you take away this answer Onely by making a wry mouth Away away Have I not already demonstrated unto thee that it is impossible to know substances themselves but onely by their operations Here he answers again that that cannot be For then a Plowman would be as wise as himself and mother Bunch as his mother Oxenford But to satisfie this inconvenience if it be any to grant a Plow-man wiser then thou art I say Thou and thy mother may be wiser then a Plow-man in other things though not in this and in this if your notion be more adequate and precise then his is that is If you are able according to the Rules of Logick to examine whether your assertion may go for an axiome that is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and are able to rest fatisfied by finding your selves to know according to the capacity of the subject But now Phil. you indeavour to go so far beyond the Plow-man that you fall short of him and reach at so high strains that you have strain'd your self till you seem half crackt to the sober For this truth That a Substance is not to be known but by its proper operations is a truth so clear that it is clear that he is destitute of sight and judgement that doth not discern it even at the first proposall Observation 5 6 7. What thou answerest to these 5th 6th and 7th Observations is nothing at all to the purpose and therefore to no purpose at all to answer any thing to them as I have already said in the like case and I must leave something to the candour and judgement of the Reader Observation 8. Page 97. line 1. Mastix you place the difficulty in the Rudiments or Sperms because they are lax and fluid No Magicus but I do not For I think they are alwayes so or else the Ratio Seminalis would have a hard task of it But when thou sayest That the Anima in the Matter missing a vent c. the difficulty is how a thing so subtile as a Soul is should misse a vent in so lax a matter as the first Rudiments of life This is the difficulty Magicus But thou understandest not the force of any thing I propound to thee thy apprehension is so out of tune with straining at high things nothing to the purpose But I perceive though thou wouldst dissemble it Magicus that I have beat thee from the Bung-hole and that rude expression borrowed thence And now thou art as busie as a Moth about a candle to fetch a Metaphor thence For thou tellest us that this union is like that betwixt the candle and the flame This indeed for some Poeticall illustration may do well but what Philosophicall satisfaction is there in it Philalethes For first the flame is wâ—thout the candle not in it but the Soul within the body not without it Secondly the flame is â—n effect of the candle but the Soul is not an effect of the body the body is not the pabulum thereof and the very substance of which it is made by superinducing a new modification Thirdly and lastly the Soul is still the same individuall soul but the flame is no more the same flame then the water betwixt such and such banks of the river is still the same water If thou hadst put thy finger into thy nose and said Lo the mystery of the union of the Soul and Body it had been as much Philosophicall satisfaction as this from the union of flame and candle Thou pitifull puzled thing thou are not yet able to weigh what thou sayest And now I have drove thee from the flame of the candle thou hast scudded away quite into the dark flown to I know not what strange obscure expressions a story of old grand-dame Nature with a set Ruff and a gold chain about her neck which thou callest propinquity of Complexions and I know not what I prethee how much doth this differ from Sympathy and Antipathy which all knowing men call Asylum ignorantiae and now I have drove thee thither I will leave thee in that Sanctuary of fools What I have said I have already made good That the Souls union with the Body is more Theomagicall then Magicus himself is aware of Observation 9. Page 98. line 16. This aethereall sense and Fire of simple Aire both which he makes to be one and the same thing All that I say there is That those verses are understood of the vehicle of the soul not of the soul
it self and it is Theupolus his opinion as well as mine who cites those verses of Virgil and gives that sense of them to wit that the two-fold vehicle of the soul is there meant the AEthereall and Spirituous not the Soul it self Academic Contemplat lib. 4. So that Virgil doth not at all patronize thy grosse conceit of making the Soul consist of fire and aire Page 99. line 10. I grant the soul to be a hodily substance that hath dimensions too Why Phil Is there any bodily Substances without dimensions I could very willingly grant thee a mere body without a soul thou hast so little reason and sense in thee or if thou hast a soul that it is a corporeall one and it may well be so But my question is meant of souls that have Sense and Reason in them whether they be corporeall substances or no Yes say you they are They are intelligent Fire and Light I say Phil. thou art all fire but no light nor intelligent at all Thou art the hottest fellow that ever I met with in all my dayes as hot as a Taylours Goose when it hisseth and yet as dark But let 's endeavour if it be possible to vitrifie thy opake carcase and transmit a little light into thâ—e Doest thou know then what fire is how it is a very fluid body whose particles rest not one by another but fridge one against another being very swiftly and variously agitated In this condition is the matter of fire But now I demand of thee Is there any substance in this fire thou speakest of for thou sayest it is really fire and usest no Metaphor which we may call the essentiall Form thereof or no If there be I ask thee wheâ—her that Form be Intelligent or no If it be then that is the soul and this subtile agitated matter is â—ut the vehicle But if thou wilt say that the subtile fiery matter is the Intelligent Soul see what inconveniencies thou intanglest thy self in For Fire being as homogeneall a body as water is and having all the parts much what alike agitated how can this fire do those offices that commonly are attributed to the soul First how can it organize the body into so wise a structure and contrivement the parts of this fire tending as much this way as that way or at least tending onely one way suppose upward Secondly how can it inform the whole body of an Embryo in the wombe and of a grown man For if it was but big enough for the first it will be too little for the latter unlesse you suppose it to grow and to be nourished But thus you will not have the same Indiuiduall Soul you was Christened with and must be forced to turn not onely Independent but Anabaptist that your new soul may be baptized for it is not now the same that you was Christened with before For I say that ten spoonfulls of water added to one should rather individuate the whole then that one of that whole number should individuate the ten Thirdly how can it move it self or the body in a spontaneous way For all the particles of this fiery matter wriggling and playing on their own centers or joyntly endeavouring to tend upwards makes nothing to a spontaneous motion no more then the Atomes of dust that are seen playing in the Sun beams striking through a chink of a wall into a dark room can conspire into one spontaneous motion and go which way they please Wherefore I say there ought to be some superintendent Form that takes hold of all these fiery particles and commands them as one body and guides them this way or that way and must be the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of this fiery substance that is There must be such an essence in this fiery matter and that is noted by the preposition 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as doth 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that doth hold together that doth drive this way according to its nature or will and yet thus driving doth keep possession of this fiery Matter and what is this but â— Soul not the indument the smock or peticote of the Soul as thou call'st it Eugenius thou art old excellent at finding out naked essences it seems that takest the garment for the body Thou art so young that thou canst not distinguish betwixt a living barn and a baby made of clouts But this is not all that I have to say Phil. Fourthly I say that this Fire cannot be the Soul because fire is devoid of sense I but you say you understand an Intelligent fire Learnedly answered and to as much purpose as if you should say that a Soul is a Post or a Pillar and then you should distinguish and tell me you meant an Intelligent Post or Pillar but I say Fire hath no more sense then a Post or Pillar has reason For if it have sense it must have that which the Schools call Sensus communis And now tell me Phil to which of all the playing particles of this Ignis fatuus of thine thou wilt appoint the office of the Sensus communis or why to any one more then to the rest But if thou appoint all there will be as many severall sensations as there are particles Indeed so many distinct living things And thou wilt become more numerous within then the possessed in the Gospel whose name was Legion because they were many But if thou wilt pitch upon any one particle above the rest tell me where it is In the middle or at the out-side of this fire I will interpret thee the most favourably and answer for thee In the middle But I demand of thee Why shall this in the middle have the priviledge of being the Sensus Communis rather then any other or how will it be able to keep it self in the middle in so fluid a body And if it were kept there what priviledge hath it but what the most of the rest have as well as it to make it fit for the office of a Sensus Communis For it must be either because it is otherwise moved on its Center then the other are on theirs which you can not prove either to be or if it were to be to any purpose Or it must be because it hath some advantage in consideration of the joynt motion of the particles Let the joynt motion therefore of the particles be either rectilinear or circular If rectilinear as suppose in a square let the processe of motion be from side to side parallel Hath not then any particle in a right line that is drawn through the center of this Square figure parallel to two of the sides equal advantage for this office the transmission of outward sense being perpendicular to the said right line that the middle particle hath For thus it can receive but what comes in one line transmission of sense being parallel as is supposed Nay the points of any other inward line parallel to this will
do as well as the points of this middle line which is as plainly true as two and two is four if thou understandest sense when it is propounded to thee Well but it may be you may think you can mend your self by supposing the joynt motion of this fiery matter to be circular I say no. For then that of this motion that respects externall objects is from the Center to the Circumference as it is plain in that ordinary experiment of a Sling And thus motion is from the middle particle not towards it But you should say here if you could answer so wisely that motion bearing forward from this center toward the object that reciprocally the object will bear against it and so there will be a transmission of sense round about from all the circumferentiall parts of this fiery Orb which thou calledst the naked soul. But I say Magicus if the middle point of this Orb get the place of the Sensus Communis because there is a common transmission of motion from sensible Objects thereunto I say then that there be more Sensus Communes in this Orb then One because such transmissions as are not perpendicular to this Orb will meet in severall points distant from the middle point or center of this Orb and there are enough such externall transmissions as these I might adde also that the middle point or particle being though a minute one yet a body and consequently divisible that that will also bid fair for a multiplicity of Common Senses But I will adde onely this That I hope to see the day wherein thou wilt be so wise as to be able to confesse that the Authour of Anthroposophia Theomagica c. was the most confident Ignaro that ever wet paper with ink But before I leave this fourth argument let me onely cast in one thing more which equally respects both Hypotheses either of rectilinear or circular motion And that 's this If any one particle of this fiery substance be the Common sense it must be also the principle of spontaneous motion to the whole substance For we see plainly that that which hath the Animadversive faculty in man or the office of Common sense moves the whole man or that the motion of him is directed at the beck of this But I prethee Phil tell me if thou canst possibly imagine that any one particle in this fiery substance should be able to impresse spontaneous Motion upon the whole I know thou canst not but think it impossible Fifthly if the Soul be fire fire being so fluid and unsteddy a substance how can there be any memory in it You remember that expression in Catullus whereby he would set forth sudden oblâ—teration and forgetfulness of things that it is like writing in the Water or in the Aire In vento aut rapidâ scribere oportet aquâ But what think you of fire then will that consistency bear more durable characters The perpetuall fridging and toying of the fiery particles dorh forthwith cancell whatever is impressed and now there is neither Common sense nor Memory to be found in your fire we may be secure there is no Reason to be found there For the Discursive Faculty requires some 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 something fixt to tread upon as well as the Progressive But in your fire all is aflote nothing fixt Sixthly and lastly If the Soul of man be either fire or aire or both I do not see that it will prove immortall but that its consistency will be dispersed and scattered like the clouds It will not be able to conflict with the boistrous winds or scape blowing out or being lost in the thinne aire as other flames are it once being uncased of the armature of the body And these Vehicles which you will have to be the very Soul it self they being so changeable and passive within the body it will not be absurd with Lucretius to inferre that they will be utterly dissolved when they are without Haec igitur tantis ubi morbis corpore in ipso Iactentur miserÃsque modis distracta laborent Cur eadem credis sine corpore in aere aperto Cum validis ventis aetatem degere posse To this sense If in the body rack'd with tort'rous pain And tost with dire disease they 're wearied so This shelter lost how can they then sustain The strong assaults of stormy winds that blow I tell thee Phil such a Soul as thou fanciest would be no more able to withstand the winds then the dissipable clouds nor to understand any more sense then a Soul of clouts or thy own Soul doth But now I have so fully confuted thy grosse opinion of the Soul it may be happily expected that I would declare mine own But Phil I onely will declare so much that I do not look on the Soul as a Peripateticall atome but as on a spirituall substance without corporeall dimensions but not destitute of an immateriall amplitude of Essence dilatable and contractible But for further satisfaction in this point I referre to my Philosophicall Poems And do professe that I have as distinct determinate and clear apprehension of these things and as wary and coherent as I have of any corporeall thing in the world But Heat and Fantastry to suddled minds are as good companions as Caution and Reason to the sober But the durablenesse of that satisfaction is uncertain whereas solid Reason is lasting and immutable SECT X. The Confutation of Eugenius his Magicall Chain explained and confirmed His arguments for knowledge or understanding in the Seminall Forms of things utterly subverted The fondnesse of his definition of the first principle of his Clavis A demonstration that the starres receive not any light from the Sun Eugenius taxed of Enormous incivility Mastix his friend vindicated His Conjecture of Magia Adamica His censure of the present ill temper of Eugenius Observation 10. Pag. 101. MY Book also informes you that this Descent of light proceeds not from any weight but from a similitude and Symbole of Nature You are indeed very good at similitudes Phil. as I have proved heretofore out of your skill in Zoography But this is another businesse For here you professe to speak of the symbolizing and sympathizing of things one with another in Nature and so mutually moving to union by a kind of attractive power according to that saying 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Well be it so that there is a mutuall attractive power in things that symbolize one with another for the attraction is mutuall as well as the similitude mutuall What is this to take away what I have objected Nothing But I will shew you how you are hang'd in your own chain For it is as plain as one of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that where two things of the same nature act the greater is stronger and the stronger prevails Wherefore three portions of light should fetch up two or five one rather then one should fetch down three or five or two This
causes of his being defeated in his great designes upon Fame and Knowledge That a wise man will not onely not be hurt but be profited by his Enemy ANd now O men of Ephesus I mean all you that reap the fruit of this noble exploit of mine rear me up my deserved Trophey and inscribe this Tetrastich upon it for an everlasting monument of your gratitude to me and love to the truth Religions Heat as yet unpurged quite From fleshly sense and self when 't makes a stir About high Mystâ—ries above Reasons light Is at the bottome but a rabid Curre But that I may conceal nothing from you O men of Ephesus I must tell you that whether you rear up this monument or whether you forbear all is one For the truth of these verses is already written in the corner stones of the Universe and engraven on the lasting pillars of Eternity Heaven and earth may passe away but noâ— one tittle of this truth shall passe away High and windy Notions do but blow up and kindle more fiercely the fire of Hel in the hearts of men from whence is Pride and Contention and bitter Zeal This is the pest and plague of Mankind and the succeeding torture of the sons of Adam For while the mind of man catcheth at high things of which she is uncapable till she be refined and purged she doth but fire the frame of her little world by her overbusie Motion which burning in grosse fewel fills all with smoke And thus the Soul is even smothered and stifled in her narrow mansion Her first enlargement here must therefore be by Temperance and Abstemiousnesse For without this breathing-hole for fresh aire Devotion it self will choak her still more and more heating her thick and polluted spirits in such sort that they cannot be sufficiently rectified by the power of the brain But in this Dispensation especially is lodged a strong voice weak sense and a rude contempt of any thing that will trouble the head as Reason Philosophy or any but ordinary subtilty in learning But they love Christ very heartily after their grosse way as their Protectour and Securer from what outward evil naturally attends so bad an inward condition But being so immersed in brutish sense and yet with conscience of sinne if any body have but the trick to perswade them that Sinne is but a name he will be a very welcome Apostle to them and they will find more ease to their beastly nature in fancying nothing to be sinne then they did in making their Hypocriticall addresses to an offended Saviour And then poore souls through the foulnesse of the flesh are they easily inveigled into Atheisme it self In so great danger are we of the most mischievous miscarriages by contemning of thoâ—â— known and confessed virtues of Temperance Continence and Chastity But we 'le suppose Men in a great measure temperate yet how farre off are they still from reall happinesse in themselves or from not disturbing the happinesse of others so long as Envy Ambition Covetousnesse and Self-respect doth still lodge in them Here indeed Reason may happily get a little more elbow-room but it will be but to be Patron to those vices and to make good by Argument harsh opinions of God and peremptorily to conclude the power of Christ weaker then the force of sinne And the Fancy in these something more refined Spirits will be more easily figurable into various conceits but very little to the purpose Of which some must go for sober Truths and those that are more fully shining in the midst of a shadowy Melancholiz'd imagination must bid fair for Diuine Inspiration though neither Miracle nor Reason countenance them But you O men of Ephesus if any one tell you strange devises and forbid you the use of your Reason or the demanding of a Miracle you will be so wise as to look upon him as one that would bid you wink with your eyes that he might the more easily give you a box of the Eare or put his hand into your Pockets Now out of this Second Dispensation innumerable swarms of Sects rise in all the world For Falsehood and Imagination is infinite but Truth is one And the benignitie of the Divine Spirit having no harbour in all this varietie of religious Pageantry Envy Covetousnesse and Ambition must needs make them bustle and tear all the word in pieces if the hand of Providence did not hold them in some limits Quin laniant mundum tanta est discordia fratrum as he saith of the winds In this Dispensation lodgeth Anger and active Zeal concerning Opinions and Ceremonies Uncertainty and Anxiety touching the purposes of God and a rigid injudicious Austerity of which little comes but the frighting men off from Religion which notwithstanding if it be had in the truth thereof is the most chearfull and lovely thing in the world These men having not reached to the Second Covenant will also thank any body that could release them from the First For whereas true Religion is the great joy and delight of them that attain to it theirs is but their burden And so it is not impossible that these may be also wound off to the depth of wickednesse and sink also in time even to Atheisme it self For what is reall in them will work but what is imaginary will prove it self ineffectuall Wherefore is it not farre better for men to busie all their strength in destroying those things which are so evidently destructive of humane felicity then to edge their spirits with fiery notions and strange Fantasmes which pretend indeed to the semblance of deep mysterious knowledge and divine speculation but do nothing hinder but that the black dog may be at the bottome as I said before But you will ask me How shall we be rid of the Importunity of the impostures and fooleries of this Second Dispensation But I demand of you Is there any way imaginable but this viz. To adhere to those things that are uncontrovertedly good and true and to bestow all that zeal and all that heat and all that pains for the acquiring of the simplicity of the life of God that we do in promoting our own Interest or needlesse and doubtfull Opinions And I think it is without controversie true to any that are not degenerate below men that Temperance is better then Intemperance Justice then Injustice Humility then Pride Love then Hatred and Meâ—cifulnesse then Cruelty It is also uncontrovertedly true that God loves his own Image and that the propagation of it is the most true dispreading of his glory as the Light which is the Image of the Sunne is the glory of the Sunne Wherefore it is as plainly true that God is as well willing as able to restore this Image in men that his glory may shine in the world This therefore is the true Faith to believe that by the power of God in Christ we may reach to the participation of Divine Nature Which is a simple mild benigne
that he that will not let any man go before him provokes all men Here therefore was thy imprudence Eugenius that thou wouldst take the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to thy self without so much as any debate or asking leave when every Galenist Aristotelean Cartesian and Theosophist thinks it belongs to him as much as to thee Thus hast thou provoked all men against thee and made ship-wrack of thy fame as well as fallen short of Learning But you 'le say why what would you have me to have done as some others do who though they be proud yet put on a handsome dresse of Modesty and squeamish Humility That I tell thee had been indeed something more like Prudence which thy raised heat could not stoop to but I must confesse it had been but a kind of Morall Sneaking For as the bending down of the upper parts of the Body so that the talnesse of the stature thereof is concealed is the Sneaking of the Body so to make a mans self more humble then he is or lesse high-minded is the Sneaking of the Soul But the first point of wisdome is to be really humble indeed For an Humble mind is as still as the night and as clear as the noon-day So that it is able without any impatiency or prejudice to discern all things and rightly to judge of all things This Christian temper is so sober and wise that no Imposture can surprize it nor ever will it hurt it self by rashnesse and imprudency This is the heir of God the treasury of all humane divine and naturall knowledge and the delight and praise of men where ever it appears But the inseparable companions of haughtinesse are Ignorance Shame and Enmity But believe it Eugenius as this divine Humility is of more worth so is it of more labour then to find the Philosophers stone or the famous Medicine you talk of I am certain of more consequence by ten thousand times And me thinks now at length through all those waves and rufflings of thy disordered mind I see something at the bottome in thee O Eugenius that begins to assent to what I say that begins to shine and smile and look upon me as a very pleasant Apostle sent not without providence to toy and sport thee into a more sober temper and advertise thee of the highest good that the Soul of man is capable of and thou wilt I am confident very suddenly say and that from thy heart that better are the wounds of a friend then the kisses of an enemy Or if thou canst not yet fancy him a friend that hath worn the vizard of a foe so long yet I do not mistrust but that thou wilt be so wise as according to Xenophons Principle not onely not to be hurt but also to be profited by thine enemy An enemy indeed is not a thing to be embosomed and embraced as the Satyr would have done the fire when he first saw it and therefore was forewarned by Prometheus to abstain 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 But in the mean time that which it would pain or consume may by observing the right laws of using it receive kindly warmth and vigour from it and work excellent things in virtue of its heat or light Did not Telephus heal his wound by his enemies spear And had not Iason his impostume cured by that weapon that was meant for his deadly dispatch You know also the story of Hiero Eugenius who when his enemy had upbraided him with his stinking breath chid his wife when he came home because she never had it discovered to him all◠that time of their living together But she being very honest and simple told her husband that she thought all mens breaths smelt so You see then how much more easie it is to hear what is true concerning us of our professed Adversaries then of our bosome Friends But methinks I hear thee answer that neither a bosome Friend nor an embittered Enemy can be competent judges of a mans vices or virtues for the one would be too favourable and the other too severe What then wouldst thou have some Third thing a mean betwixt both according to that known Aphorisme 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 whom thou mightest hope would prove an impartiall judge why that 's I Phil. whom I dare say thou art confident to be no friend to thee and I dare swear I am no enemy And therefore why should I despair but that my fitnesse and skill may prove as successefull in allaying of Eugenius his tumour as that unskilfull hand was lucky in lancing Iasons impostume And being once cured do not then repine that there was a time wherein thou wast unsound no more then Alexander the great that he was once so little as to be lodged within the narrow compasse of his mothers wombe or Milo who at length could lift an ox that he was once so weak that he could not stirre a lamb And what think'st thou Phil. of Plato Empedocles Democritus Socrates and other profound sages of the World can you imagine that when they had arrived to that pitch of knowledge that it was any shame or regret to them that there was once a time when they knew not one letter of the Alphabet Why then should my Eugenius be troubled that he was once Childish Ignorant Proud and Passionate when he is well cured of those distempers We are what we are and what is past is not and therefore is not to afflict us But he that is more anxious concerning Fame then Virtue and seeks onely to seem a gallant and invincible thing to the whole world when in the mean time his mind is very weak and vulnerable I know my Eugenius is so wise that such a man as this will seem as irrationall to him as if one having by ill chance cut his shinne he should be lesse solicitous about healing of his legge then mending of his stocken FINIS The Contents of Mastix his Letter 1. THe reason why he permitted his Observations and Reply to be reprinted 2. Of David George and Jacob Behmen 3. That there are two main wayes of assenting to truth viz. The Evidence of Reason or the Vigour of Fancy and to which of these two Jacob Behmens complexion carried him 4. The great use of that Consideration and a vindication of Jacob Behmen from the calumnie of his Adversaries 5. Mastix suspects the objections here propounded to be his friends own though he dissemble it but the willinglier answers to them for his sake 6. A generall Apologie for the mirth of his Observations 7. An Apologie for the whole second Section of his Reply 8. The Faith of the Platonists and of Christians in reference to a blessed immortality in what they agree and in what they differ and the preheminence of the one above the other 9. That God is not united after the same manner with every Christian that he is with Christ himself and yet that God is communicated to every
Christ. Those that reprehend this passage they seem to me to be very reprehensible themselves as having fallen into two errours The one is that they think it so enormous and extravagant an expression of men being called Gods when as very sober and holy writers have made use of the phrase being warranted thereunto as they conceive from Scripture it self which expresly bestows upon us the title of sonnes of God John 1. Filios Dei fieri hâ—e Deos say they Nam quis nisi Deus potest esse filius Dei Isa. Cafaub and the same Authour out of the Fathers 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 S. Augustine speaks very roundly to the same purpose Templum Dei aedificaxi ex iis quos facit non factus Deus and Athanasius ad Adelphium 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Christ became man that he might make us Gods But what this Deification is he doth distinctly and judiciously set down thus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 To be made God sayes he is to be united with the Deitie by the partaking of the Spirit of God And for my own part I understand nothing else by Deification which is so often repeated in that excellent Manual Theologia Germanica in which though there be much of Melancholy yet I think there is more true and savory Divinity then in thousands of other writings that make a greater noise in the world The other errour my Reprehenders are reprehensible in is in that they look upon me here as countenancing such phrases as these when it is plain I check the users of them for their affectation of such high language especially they having abused it not onely to an unmannerly usurpation of an equall estate or paritie with Christ but to a wilde presumption that there is no other God but such as themselves are Which abominable opinion of theirs presenting it self then so fully to my mind carried me forth in that zeal and vehemencie you see and therefore may be a sufficient excuse for so large an excursion I keeping my self still so well within compasse as not to let go my main designe which was against Phantastrie and Enthusiasme And do here plainly show that it may well lead a man at length to down right Ranting and Atheisme 11. Pag. 183. l. 11. Lord of the foure Elements and Emperour of the World It is in my apprehension but an extravagant censure of those that say these expressions are so extravagant If these words were to be literally understood I confesse it were the voice rather of a Mad man then of one in his right senses but they being to be understood morally they are not onely sober in themselves but contain in them a consideration very proper and effectuall for the making others sober also I mean such as by their naturall complexion being hurried on too fast after high things are liable to grow mad with excessive desire of being in some great place of honour and rule amongst men or else of being admired for some strange Magicall power over Nature and externall Elements we reminding them hereby that there is a more noble Empire and more usefull Magick to be fought after then what so pleases their mistaken fancies in endeavouring after which they shall neither forfeit their Bodies to the soveraigne Power they ought to obey nor yet their Souls to the Devil nor squander away the use of their wits and reason upon meer lying deceits and vanities Besides this inward command ouer a mans self which the wisest have alwayes accounted the highest piece of wisdome and power has ever been by all good men compared with and preferred before scepters and kingdomes so that I do but speak in the common Dialect of all those that have professed themselves to have had that right esteem of Wisdome and Virtue which it deserves The Philosophers are very loud in their expressions concerning this matter 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Laert. Zen. And Horace following their steps or rather outgoing them writes thus Ad summam sapiens uno minor est Iove Dives Liber honoratus pulcher rex denique regum Nay they are not onely content to set out the dignity of their Wise man as they call him by the title of a King but will not allow any to be truely so called besides him 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 And Demâ—philus addes that he is the onely priest also 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Christianity joynes both Titles together the Scripture teaching us that all true Christians are both Kings and Priests So sober and warrantable are those Metaphors taken from politicall dignities But is it not a piece of Pride to speak of a mans self in such high terms I answer is it not a piece of basenesse for a man to be ashamed to professe himself a Christian and his high esteem he has of that calling especially he being so fairly invited thereunto partly to wipe off the foul calumnies of his Adversary who would make the world believe I wrote against him out of envy the poorest and most sneaking of all passions and utterly contrary to all magnanimity and true gallantry of Spirit and partly to recommend to all generous Souls the love of Christianity and Virtue under the notion of a very Royall and magnificent State and condition which I do in most parts of this present Section and so to win over if it were possible my Antagonist himself from the vain affectation of Magick to a more sacred and more truly glorious power over his own Nature Pag. 183. l. 24. I still the raging of the Sea c. Impera ventis tempestatibus dic mari quiesce Aquiloni ne flaveris c. is the very allegorie that that devout Soul Thomas à Kempis uses in his devotions lib. 3. cap. 23. See also my Morall Cabbalâ— and the Defence thereof and it will warrant to a syllable every thing that I have wrote in this Section of this kind 12. Pag. 115. l. 7. And impregnation of my understanding from the most High c. Here you say they demand of me if I take my self to be inspired Yes in such sort as other well meaning Christians are that take a speciall care of venting any thing but what they can or at least think they can give a sufficient reason for I suppose that every one that is wise it is the gift of God to him And Elihu is right in this though much out in his censure of Iob I said dayes should speak and multitude of yeares should teach wisdome But there is a spirit in a man and the inspiration of the Almighty gives them understanding The Apostle also bids that if any one lack wisdome that he ask it of God wherefore if any one find any measure of wisdome in himself or at least think he does he is to give him the glory of it but whether Wisdome thus obtained of God be Inspiration or no I leave to those to dispute that love to bring all things into a form of controversie 13. Pag.