such a constitution I should have tempered it more carefully For I delight not in the vexation of any man The truth is my scope in writing that Book was laudable and honest and such as might become a very good Christian and my mirth and pleasantnesse of mind much and reall but the sharpnesse of my style personated and Aristotelicall and therefore being but affected and fictitious I felt it not there was no corrosion at all but all that was unkind in it if you will call that passion unkindnesse was a certain light indignation that I bore and ever do bear against magnificent folly And there being no name to your Book I thought I had the opportunity of doing it with the least offence as meeting with the thing disjoyned and singled from the person But I verily think I should not have medled at all if you had spared your incivilities to Des-Chartes whose worth and skill in naturall Philosophy be it fate or judgement that constrains me to it let the world judge I can not but honour and admire He is rayled at but not confuted by any that I see in his naturall Philosophy and that 's the thing I magnifie him for Though his Metaphysicks have wit and strength enough too and he hath made them good against his opposers Line 21. And assure thy self I will persecute thee so long as there is ink or paper in England Assuredly thou wilt not Philalethes For why I am dead already taken in thy trap and tortured to death will not this suffice thee I am dead and thou thy self but mortall wilt thou entertain immortall enmity against me But how canst thou persecute me being dead Wilt thou raise my soul up O Magicus by thy Necromancy and then combate with me over my grave I hope thou art but in jest Eugenius If thou beest not I must tell thee in good earnest thy present bitternesse will make thee Simon Magus like as well as thy former boasting O thou confounded and undone thing how hast thou shamed thy self Thy vizard is fallen off and thy sanctimonious clothing torn from about thee even as it was with the Apes and Monkies that being attired like men and wearing vizards over their faces did daunce and cringe and kisse and do all the gestures of men so artificially and becomingly that the Countrey people took them to be a lesser size of humane race till a waggish fellow that had more with then the rest dropt a few nuts amongst them for which they fell a scrambling so earnestly that they tore off their vizards and to the great laughter of the spectatours show'd what manner of creatures they were O Magicus do not dissemble before me For thou dost not know with what eyes I behold thee Were it not better for thee and all the world beside to make it their businesse to be really and fully possest of those things that are undoubtedly good and Christian nay indeed if they be had in the right Principle are the very buds and branches of the tree of Paradise the limbs and members of the Divine nature such as are meeknesse patience and humility discretion freedome from self-interest chastity temperance equity and the like is it not better to seek after these things then to strain at high words and uncertain flatuous notions that do but puff up the mind and make it seem full to it self when it is distended with nothing but unwholsome wind Is not this very true my dear Philatethes Line II. Upon certain similitudes and analogies of mine Now we are come to that rare piece of Zoography of thine the world drawn out in the shape of an Animal But let 's view the whole draught as it lies in your book because you make such a foul noise about it in your answer Your words are these Besides the texture of the Universe clearly discovers its Animation The Earth which is the visible naturall Basis of it represents the grosse carnall parts The element of the water answers to the bloud for in it the pulse of the great world beats this most men call the flux and reflux but they know not the true cause of it The air is the outward refreshing spirit where this vast creature breathes though invisibly yet not insensibly The interstellar skies are his vitall ethereall waters and the starres his animall sensuall fire Now to passe my censure on this rare Zoographicall peice I tell thee if thy brains were so confusedly scattered as thy phansie is here thou wert a dead man Philalethes all the Chymistry in the world could not recover thee Thou art so unitive a soul Phil. and such a clicker at the slightest shadows of similitude that thou wouldst not stick to match chalk and cheese together I perceive and mussitate a marriage betwixt an Apple and an Oyster Even those proverbiall dissimilitudes have something of similitude in them will you then take them for similes that have so monstrous a disproportion and dissimilitude But you are such a Sophister that you can make any thing good Let 's try The Earth must represent the flesh because they both be grosse so is chalk and cheese or an Apple and an Oyster But what think you of the Moon is not that as much green cheese as the Earth is flesh what think you of Venus of Mercury and the rest of the Planets which they that know any thing in Nature know to be as much flesh as the Earth is that is to be dark opake as well as shee What! is this flesh of the world then torn apeices and thrown about scattered here and there like the disjoynted limbs of dragg'd Hippolytus Go to Phil where are you now with your fine knacks and similitudes But to the next Analogie The element of water answers to the bloud Why For in it is the pulse of the great world But didst thou ever feel the pulse of the Moon And yet is not there water too thou little sleepy heedlesse Endymion The bloud is restagnant there I warrant you and hath no pulse So that the man with the thorns on his back lives in a very unwholesome region But to keep to our own station here upon Earth Dost thou know what thou sayest when thou venturest to name that monosyllable Pulse dost thou know the causes and the laws of it Tell me my little Philosophaster where is there in the earth or out of the earth in this World-Animal of thine that which will answer to the heart and the systole and diastole thereof to make this pulse And beside this There is wanting rarefaction and universall diffusion of the stroke at once These are in the pulse of a true Animal but are not to be found in the Flux of the sea For it is not in all places at once nor is the water rarefied where it is Now my pretty Parabolist what is there left to make your similitude good for a pulse in your great Animal more then when you spill your
to what you your self grant as well as according to the Hypothesis of Ptolemy that they are not too bigge to be true But secondly I say they are not as little as Mites in respect of the cheese they are in For the semi-diameter of Saturns Epicycle is to the semi-diameter of his Eccentrick at least as 1 to 10. and the semi-diameter of Jupiters Epicycle to the semi-diameter of his Eccentrick more then as 1 to 6. but Mars his as 2 to 3 or thereabout and the semidiameter of the Epicycle of Venus to the semidiameter of her eccentrick more then as 2 to 3 by a good deal And is it not plain hence Eugenius that thy mite in a cheese must swell up at least to the bignesse of a Mouse in a cheese though thy cheese were almost as little as a trundle bed wheel or a box of Marmalade and what a vast difference is there betwixt a Mite and a Mouse but thy ignorance emboldens thee to speak any thing But now in the last place the putting these two falsities together is contradiction as well as they are severally false For it is evident that if the Epicycles be too bigge to be true they cannot be so little as Mites in a cheese in respect of their orbs For then would they be easily contain'd within the crassities or thicknesse of their orbs But their not being able to be conteined within the Crassities of their orbs that 's the thing that must make them too bigge to be true And questionlesse if we will joyn the Epicycle with its right office which is to bring down the Planet to its lowest Perigee then the Epicycles of the planets will be too bigge to be true For there will be of them that are half as big again as their Deiferents nay five times if not ten times as big And of these Epicycles I said and Ptolemies ought to have been such unlesse they did desert their office that they were too bigge to be true But thou pronouncest concerning these things thou knowst not what and therefore art easily tost up and down like a shittle cock thou knowst not whither How do I blow thee about as the dust or the down of thistles ut plumas avium pappósque volantes Observ. 16. Thou Moore à {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} As much as a {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} Thou art so drunk intoxicated with thine own bloud as Aristotle saith of all young men that they are {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} that thou seest double two O's in my name for one Observ. 19. See what I answer at observation the 23. Observ. 20. Phy Phy some rose-water Who speaks like a Puritan now Phil but why some rose water hast thou devoured an Orenge like an apple pulp and pill and all and so made thy mouth bitter O thou man of Wales But it is to wash hur mouth from bawdry Why wilt thou be so bold then as to name the Lawyers phrase rem in re Or hast thou a purpose to call all the Lawyers bawdy Gentlemen by craft I tell thee Phil. To the pure all things are pure but thy venerious phansie which I rebuked in this passage thou exceptedst against doth soyl and corrupt what is chast and pure Observ. 21. I do Mastix I do Why doest thou not then explain it thou little Mastigia Observ. 23. Here I have you fast Philalethes for all your wriggling For if our vitall and animal spirits which are as much a part of us as any other part of our body is be fed and nourished by the Aire then the Aire is an Element of our body But here he would fain save himself by saying that the Aire is rather a Compound then an Element but let any man judge how much more it is compounded then the Earth and then Water which nourisheth by drinking as well as the Aire can do by breathing Observ. 24. Page 59. line 1. How can darknesse be called a Masse c. No it cannot Nor a thin vaporous matter neither Thy blindnesse cannot distinguish Abstracts from Concrets Thy soul sits in the dark Philalethes nibbles on words as a mouse in a hole on cheese parings But to slight thy injudicious cavil at Mass to fall to the Matter I charged thee here to have spoke such stuff as implies a Contradiction Thou saidest that this Masse be it black or white dark or bright that 's nothing to the Controversie here did contain in a farre lesse compasse all that was after extracted I say this implies a Contradiction But you answer this is nothing but Rarefaction and Condensation according to the common notion of the Schools I but that Notion it self implies a Contradiction for in Rarefaction and Condensation there is the generation or deperdition of no new Matter but all matter hath impenetrable dimensions Therefore if that large expansion of the heavens lay within the compasse of the Masse that matter occupyed the same space that the masse did and so dimensions lay in dimensions and thus that which is impenetrable was penetrated which is a contradiicton What thou alleadgest of the rarefaction of water into clouds or vapours is nothing to the purpose For these clouds and vapours are not one continued substance but are the particles of the water put upon motion and playing at some distance one from another but do really take up no more place then before Observ. 26. To say nothing to thy fond cavil at words in the former Observation and thy false accusation that I called thee dog for I would not dishonour Diogenes so much as to call thee so and leaving it to the censure of the world how plain and reall thy principles are I am come now to my 26 Observation on the 23 page of thy Anthroposophia where thou tellest us That there is a threefold Earth viz Elementary Celestiall Spirituall Now let us see what an excellent layer of the fundamentals of Science thou wilt prove thy self And here he begins to divide before he defines Thou shouldest first have told us what Earth is in generall before thou divide it This is like a creature with a cloven foot and never a head But when thou didst venture to define these Members where was thy Logic Ought not every definition nay ought not every Precept of Art to be {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} but I will not vex thy head with these severities The Magnet is the second member the object of this 26 Observation Here you say I condemn this Magnet but I do not offer to confute it But I answer I have as substantially confuted it as merrily but thou dost not take notice of it I have intimated that this precept of art is not {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} nay that it is plainly false For it affirms that which hath no discovery by reason or experience viz. That there is a certain earth which you call
pottage or shog a milk-bowl But believe it Eugenius thou wilt never make sense of this Flux and Reflux till thou calm thy phansie so much as to be able to read Des-Cartes But to tell us it is thus from an inward form more Aristotelico is to tell us no more then that it is the nature of the Beast or to make Latine words by adding onely the termination bus as hosibus and shoosibus as Sir Kenhelm Digby hath with wit and judgement applied the compárison in like case But now to put the bloud flesh and bones together of your World-Animal I say they bear not so great a proportion to the more fluid parts viz. the vitall and animal spirits thereof as a mite in a cheese to the whole globe of the Earth So that if thou hadst any phansie or judgement in thee thy similitude would appear to thine own self outragiously ugly and disproportionable and above all measure ridiculous Nor do not think to shuffle it off by demanding If there be so little earth to tell thee where it is wanting For I onely say that if the world be an Animal there will be much bloud and flesh wanting Philalethes for so great a Beast Nor do not you think to blind my eyes with your own Tobacco smoke I take none my self Eugenius For to that over ordinary experiment I answer two things First that as you look upon the parts of the body of a true Animal in the same extension that they now actually are not how they may be altered by rarefaction so you are also to look upon the parts of your World-Animal as they are de facto extended not how they may be by rarefaction And thus your Argument from Tobacco will vanish into smoke But if you will change the present condition of any lesser Animal by burning it and turning many of the grosse parts into more thinne and fluid you destroy the ground of your comparison betwixt the World-Animal and it for you take away the flesh of your lesser Animal thus burnt And besides the proportion betwixt the vapour or thinner parts extension to the remaining ashes is not yet so big as of the thin parts of the World-Animal in respect of its solid parts by many thousand and thousand millions Nay I shall speak within compasse if I say as I said before that there is a greater disproportion then betwixt the globe of the Earth and a mite in a cheese This is plainly true to any that understands common sense For the Earth in respect of the World is but as an indivisible point Adde to all this that if you will rarefie the Tobacco or Hercules body by fire I will take the same advantage and say that the water and many parts of the earth may be also rarefied by fire and then reckon onely upon the remaining ashes of this globe and what is turned into vapour must be added to the more fluid parts of the World-Animal to increase that over-proportion So that thou hast answered most wretchedly and pitifully every way poor Anthroposophus But besides In the second place When any thing is burnt as for example your Tobacco I say it takes up then no more room then it did before Because Rarefaction and Condensation is made per modum spongiae as a sponge is distended by the coming in and contracted again by the going out of the water it had imbib'd But the Aristotelicall way which is yours O profound Magicus that hast the luck to pick out the best of that Philosophy implies I say grosse contradictions which thou canst not but understand if thou canst distinguish corporeall from incorporeall Beings Thy way of Rarefaction and Condensation O Eugenius must needs imply penetration of dimensions or something as incongruous as every lad in our Universities at a year or two standing at least is able to demonstrate to thee But if thou thinkest it hard that so little a body as a pipe of Tobacco should be multiplied into so very much superficies above what it had before go to those that beat out leaf gold and understand there how the superficies of the same body may be to wonder increased And beside I could demonstrate to thee that a body whose basis thou shouldst imagine at the center of the Earth top as far above the starry Heaven as it is from thence to the Earth without any condensation used thereunto is but equall to a body that will lie within the boll of a Tobacco pipe Where art thou now thou miserable Philosophaster But to the next Analogie The aire is the outward refreshing spirit where this vast Creature breaths Two things I here object to shew the ineptnesse and inconguity of this comparison The one is taken from the office of respiration which is to refresh by way of refrigerating or cooling Is not the main end of the lungs to cool the bloud before it enter into the left ventricle of the heart But thou art so Magical thou knowst none of these sober and usefull mysteries of Nature All that thou answerest to this is That we are refresh'd by heat as well as by coolnesse Why then Is that generall sufficient to make up your analogie or similitude This is as well phansied as it is reasoned when men conclude affirmatively in the second figure There are laws in Phansie too Philalethes and I shall shew thee anon how ridiculous thou hast made thy self by transgressing them If thou meanest by refresh'd to be cheared or restored onely and what ever do's this must be ground enough to phansie a respiration then thou breathest in thy cawdle when thou eatest it and hast spoyled that conceit of his that said he never would drink sack whilst he breathed for if sack do in any sense refresh and comfort a man it seems he breaths while he drinks I tell thee in the Homologi termini of similitudes there ought to be something in some sort peculiar and restrained or else it is flat ridiculous and non-sense The other objection was taken from the situation of this aire that is to be the matter of Respiration in this great Animal What a wild difference is there in this The aire that an ordinary Animal breaths in is externall the aire of this world-Animal internall so that it is rather wind in the guts then aire for the lungs and therefore we may well adde the Cholick to the Anasarca Is the wind-Cholick an outward refreshing spirit or an inward griping pain Being thou hast no guts in thy brains I suspect thy brains have slipt down into thy guts whither thy tongue should follow to be able to speak sense Answer now like an {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} O thon man of Magick He answers and the point and sting of all the sense of his answer is in the tail of it pag. 29. lin. 11. and it is their outward refreshing spirit He means the Earths and the Waters O feeble sting O foolish answer This onely
reaches so far as to save the Earth alive from my jugulating objection The globe of Earth and Water indeed may be still an Animal for all that objection But thou saidst the whole world was an Animal What is the whole world an Animal because the Earth is one O bundle of simples to return thee thine own parcell of ware again for it belongs not to me this is as well argued as if thou shouldest say That a cheese is an Animal because there is one living mite in it But that this Earth neither is a breathing Animal is plain enough For what respiration what attraction and reddition of aire is there in it There may be indeed something answering to sweating and perspiration nothing to respiration my good Philalethes But to shew thee thy folly I will follow thy liberty and impudently pronounce that a pair of bellows is an Animal Why is it not It has a nose to breathe through that 's plain the two handles are the two eares the leather the lungs and that which is the most seemly analogie of all the two holes in the back-side are the two eyes as like the eyes in the fore-side of a Crab as ever thou seest any thing in thy life Look thee Phil. are they not You 'll say The analogie of the nose is indeed as plain as the nose on a mans face But how can the handles be eares when they stand one behind another whereas the eares of Animals stand one on one side and the other on the other side of the head And then how can the leather be lungs they being the very out-side of its body Or those two holes eyes They have neither the situation as being placed behind nor office of eyes Answer me all these objections O Mastix I can fully answer them O Magicus This is an Animal drawn out according to thine own skill and principles The leather sayst thou must be no lungs because it is without Why then the aire must be no aire for thy World-Animal to breath because it is within And if thou canst dispence with within and without much more mayst thou with before and behind or behind and on the sides So the eares and lungs of this Animal hold good against thee still Now to preserve my monsters eyes against this Harpy that would scratch them out They are no eyes say you because they have not the situation of eyes But I told thee before thou makest nothing of situation But they have not the office of eyes Why They can see as much as the eyes of thy World-Animal for ought thou knowest I but this Bellows-Animal breaths at these eyes And have not I shewed thee that thy World-Animal breaths in his guts But I will make it plain to thee that those two holes are eyes For they are two as the two eyes are and transmit the thin aire through them as the eyes do the pure light So that they agree gainly well in the generall As your Respiration in the World-Animal in refreshing though by heat when in others it is by cold Fie on thee for a Zoographicall Bungler These Bellows thou seest is not my Animal but thine and the learned shall no longer call that instrument by that vulgar name of a pair of Bellows but Tom Vaughans Animal So famous shalt thou grow for thy conceited foolerie The interstellar skies are his vitall ethereall waters Here I object O Eugenius that there is an over-proportionated plenty of those waters in thy World-Animal and that thus thou hast distended the skin of thy Animal God knows how many millions of miles off from the flesh O prodigious Anasarca But what dost thou answer here viz. That I say that the body which we see betwixt the starres namely the interstellar waters is excessive in proportion No I do not say so but that they are two excessive in proportion to be the fluid parts of a World-Animal But how ever as if I had said so he goes about to prove that there is no excesse of proportion in them Dost thou hear Mastix sayes he Look up and see Well I hear Phil. I look up But do not chock me under the chin thou wag when I look up Now what must I see What a number of bonefires lamps and torches are kindled in that miraculous celestiall water Yes I see them all I suppose they burn so clear for joy and triumph that my Reason and Sense have so victoriously overthrown thy Phantastry and Non-sense But why miraculous waters Phil I see the cause Bonefires and torches burn in the waters That were a miracle indeed Eugenius but that it is a falsity Thou givest things false names and then wouldst amaze us with verbal miracles And the starres his animal sensuall fire What is thy meaning here little Phil. For I never called thee to account for this yet That this World-Animal has sense onely in the starres To call them the eyes of the world is indeed pretty and Poeticall And Plato's delicious spirit may seem to countenance the conceit in that elegant Distich upon his young friend After which in plain English is Starre whom he instructed in the Art of Astronomie {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} Thou viewest the starres my Star were I the skyes That I might fix on thee so many eyes But what Eugenius wilt thou venture in Philosophick coolnesse to say the sense of thy World-Animal lies in the starres I prethee what can those starry eyes spy out of the world They are very quick-sighted if they can see there where there is nothing to be seen But it may be this Animal turns its eyes inward and views it self I would Philalethes were such an Animal too He would then find so much amisse within that he would forbear hereafter to be so censorious without But what is there sense then onely in the starres For sense can be no where but where there is accesse for the Animal spirits So it seems the starres must hear as well as see nay feel and tast as they do questionlesse as often as they lick in and eat up that starre-fodder the vapours wherewith in Seneca they are phantastically said to be nourished And thus you see that Tom Vaughans Animal I mean the bellows now may see at the very same two holes that it breathes at for he confounds all by his indiscreet phansie How art thou blown about like a feather in the air O thou light-minded Eugenius How vain and irrationall art thou in every thing Art thou the Queen of Sheba as thy Sanguin a little overflowing thy Choler would dresse up thy self to thy soft imagination and make thee look smugg in thy own eyes Had that Queen so little manners in her addresses to so great a Philosopher No thy language in all thy book is the language of a scold and of a slut And for thy wit if thou wilt forgo thy right to the ladle and bells thy feminine
intellectuall Idea's which are the seals of Gods sensible works for before the earth sent forth herbs there was even then Saith Moses herbs in Rerum Natura and before the grasse grew there was invisible grasse Can you desire any thing more plain and expresse But to make thee amends for laughing at thy division of the Idea which had but one member and hopped like one of the Monocoli upon a single legge I will give thee another Idea besides this out of the same Philo and such as may be truly called both an Idea and a naturall one a thing betwixt thy Ideal vestiment and the Divine Idea it self {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} pag. 6. {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} that is But the fruits was not onely for nourishment for living creatures but preparations also for the perpetuall generation of the like kind of plants they having in them Seminall Substances in which the hidden and invisible forms of all things become manifest and visible by circumvolutions of seasons These are the {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} or Rationes seminales the seminall Forms of things Observ. 11. Page 48. line 9. Mastix is deliver'd of a Bull This is a Calf of thy own begetting but I have forgot all this while to render thee a Calf for a Bull as I promis'd thee I am not toyish enough for thee my little Phil. Do I say heat and siccity are Aqua vitae bottles But may not heat and siccity and Aqua vitae be consentany arguments what repugnancie is there in it Answer Logician Therefore there is no Bull here till thou be grown up to thy full stature Observ. 12. Here I told you that you incompassing all with the Empyreal substance you had left no room for Evening and Morning upon the Masse of the Earth What do you answer to this That the Empyreal substance was a fire which had borrowed its tincture from the light but not so much as would illuminate the Masse of it self No Philalethes Do not you say it retain'd a vast portion of light and is not that enough to illuminate the Masse of it self Nay you say it made the first day without the Sunne but now you unsay it again Pitifull baffled Creature But as for those terrible mysterious radiations of God upon the Chaos dark Evaporations of the Chaos towards God which thou wouldst fain shuffle off thy absurdities by I say they are but the flarings of thine own phansie and the reeks and fumes of thy puddled brain Dost thou tell me this from Reason or Inspiration Phil If from Reason produce thy arguments if from Inspiration shew me thy Miracle Page 51. line 25. The clouds are in the Aire not above it c. But if the clouds be the highest parts of the world according to the letter of Moses which is accommodated as I shall prove to the common conceit and sense of the Vulgar then in the judgement of sober men it will appear that thy Argument hath no agreement neither with Philosophy nor common sense Now therefore to instruct thee as well as I do sometimes laugh at theee I will endeavour to make these two things plain to thee First that Scripture speaks according to the outward appearance of things to sense and vulgar conceit of men Secondly That following this Rule we shall find the Extent of the World to be bounded no higher then the clouds or there about So that the Firmament viz. the Air for the Hebrews have no word for the Air distinct from Heaven or Firmament Moses making no distinctiō may be an adequate bar betwixt the lower and upper waters Which it was requisite for Moses to mention vulgar observation discovering that waters came down from above viz. showers of Rain and they could not possibly conceive that unlesse there were waters above that any water should descend thence And this was it that gave occasion to Moses of mentioning those two waters the one above the other beneath the firmament But to return to the first point to be proved That Scripture speaks according to the outward appearance of things to sense and vulgar conceit of men This I say is a confessed truth with the most learned of the Hebrews Amongst whom it is a rule for the understanding of many and many places of Scripture Loquitur Lex secundùm linguam filiorum hominum that is That the Law speaks according to the language of the sonnes of men as Moses Aegyptius can tell you And it will be worth our labour now to instance in some few passages Gen. 19. V. 23. The sunne was risen upon the Earth when Lot entred into Zoar. Which implies that it was before under the Earth Which is true onely according to sense and vulgar phansie deuteronom. 30. V. 4. {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} or {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} Implies that the earth is bounded at certain places as if there were truly an Hercules Pillar or Non plus ultrá As it is manifest to them that understand but the naturall signification of {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} and {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} For those words plainly import the Earth bounded by the blue Heavens and the Heavens bounded by the Horizon of the Earth they touching one another mutually Which is true onely to sense and in appearance as any man that is not a meer Idiot will confesse Ecclesiastic cap. 27. V. 12. The discourse of a godly man is alwayes with wisdome but a fool changeth as the moon That 's to be understood according to sense and appearance For if a fool changeth no more then the Moon doth really he is a wise and excellently accomplished man Semper idem though to the sight of the vulgar different For at least an Hemisphear of the Moon is alwayes enlightned and even then most when she least appears to us Hitherto may be referr'd also that 2. Chron. 4.2 Also he made a molten Sea of ten Cubits from brim to brim round in compasse and five Cubits the heigth thereof and a line of thirty Cubits did compasse it round about A thing plainly impossible that the Diameter should be ten Cubits and the Circumference but thirty But it pleaseth the Spirit of God here to speak according to the common use and opinion of Men and not according to the subtilty of Archimedes his demonstration Again Psalme 19. In them hath he set a tabernacle for the Sunne which as a bridegroom cometh out of his chamber and rejoyceth as a strong man to runne his race This as M. John Calvin observes is spoken according to the rude apprehension of the Vulgar whom David should in vain have indeavoured to teach the mysteries of Astronomy Haec ratio est saith he cur dicat tentorium ei paratum esse deinde egredi ipsum ab una coeli extremitate transire celeriter ad partem oppositam Neque enim argutè inter
alwayes so or else the Ratio Seminalis would have a hard task of it But when thou saiest 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 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 Poetical illustration may do well but what Pholosophicall satisfaction is there in it Philalethes For first the flame is without the candle not in it but the soul within the body not without it Secondly the flame is an effect of the candle but the soul is not an effect of the bodie 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 art not yet able to weigh what thou saiest 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 Observ. 9. Page 98. line 19. 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 twofold vehicle of the soul is there meant the Ethereall 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 bodily 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 thee 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 whether that Form be Intelligent or no If it be then that is the soul and this subtile agitated matter is but the vehicle But if thou wilt say that the subtile fiery matter it self 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 Individuall 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 Sunne 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 {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} of this fiery substance that is There must be such an essence in this fiery matter and that is noted by the preposition {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} as doth {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} and {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} that doth hold together that doth drive this way or that way according to its nature or will and yet thus driving doth keep possession of this fiery Matter and what is this but a Soul not the indument the smock or petticote 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 equall 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 to the center 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 experssion in Catullus whereby he would set forth sudden obliteration 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 doth 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 {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} 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 Factentur miserisque 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